Izy whizzy lets get busy (Honda Eco Mower)

Member Name: ahenry

Product:	Honda Eco Mower
Date:	01/12/02 (7579 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: power, performance

Disadvantages: maneuverability, servicing costs

Mowing a lawn is something that is best done little and often. Rotary mowers are designed to create a partial vacuum to make the grass stand up, so that it gets cut cleanly. When the grass gets long, then it takes longer to dry after rain. If you cut the grass when its wet, then the cut grass tends to clog up near the blade. Clumps of mown grass fall onto the lawn. Raking this up is time consuming and If you leave these in place, they will block out the light to the grass underneath and cause yellow patches.

If you try to get around this problem by cropping the grass closely, but infrequently, the grass will not be as healthy. Grass that is cropped very short has less leaf area for photosynthesis and tends to have shallower roots. The roots get hotter in strong sunlight as they are less shaded than when the grass is a bit longer. This means that in a drought, you get brown patches more quickly, and if the grass doesn't recover in time during the winter, this might turn into mud patches.

As a rule of thumb, you should aim to cut the grass so that you remove 1/3rd of the leaves. For instance, if you want the grass to be 2 inches long, mow it when it gets to 3 inches long (or sooner).

The aim should be to cut the grass and not bludgeon it into submission. This means that the blade has to be sharp. A blunt blade leaves a frayed tip on the grass, which will go brown. This doesn't look very nice and its more likely to let the grass get infected than if its a clean cut. It also helps for the mower to be able to keep the blade moving quickly even when it is having to slice through lots of grass.

One of the big decisions with choosing a lawn mower is whether to go for one with an electric motor or a petrol engine. One horsepower is 746 watts of electrical power, assuming 100% efficiency. A typical petrol engine on a mower will have have a 3.5 or 4.5 hp engine (2600 or 3350W). My old hovermower had a 1200W motor. However




, quite a lot of that energy was used to lift the mower up off the ground. Electric rotary mowers with wheels will typically have a less powerful motor (eg 800W) as it only has to power the blade.

If you do decide to go for an electric mower, then the best ones use an induction motor. This takes a few seconds to get up to speed, but then have a lot more torque than the universal electric motors that are used in cheaper mowers. This means their cutting performance is better, even at a lower power rating. However, when I was shopping around for a lawnmower, electric mowers with induction motors cost the same as I ended up paying for a Honda petrol mower.

The good things about a petrol-engined mower are the power so the grass gets cut cleanly and wheeched into the grass box on the first pass. With an electric mower, you may need to go over the same bit several times, which takes time. With a petrol mower you don't have a lead to trail around (cordless electric mowers are even weedier than corded ones).

Downsides with a petrol engine are that there are higher maintenance costs and the mower weighs more than an electric one. If you have a lawn with a lot of twiddly bits where you have to lift the mower around, this may be important. You can also hang an electric mower on a wall by its handle. Do that with a petrol mower and you will get a mixture of petrol and oil leaking on the floor. Its important to use fresh petrol in the engine. After a few weeks, it goes off and is best poured into your car petrol tank. It might still work, but it will tend to clog up the engine and lead to starting problems.

Petrol mowers start from about £100. However these will tend to have basic engines that are likely to be more difficult to start and you may well find that bits on the mower are made from plastic rather than steel to save a bit of money. Also its best to get the mower serviced every year or two and the parts and labour fo
r thi
s cost just about the same for a £500 mower as for a £100 one (approximately £50 at a decent dealer), and pennies saved on the purchase price could turn into pounds of costs in servicing.

Big mowers will cut a large area of lawn faster but they are more cumbersome in the twiddly bits and they are more difficult to manhandle. If you have a lawn on a hill, it may be worth getting a mower where the engine powers the wheels as well as the blade. It adds a bit of complexity and about £50 to the price. Its quite a lot more expensive to get a rotary mower with a rear roller than one with 4 wheels. I don't know why this is the case as they don't seem that different to design. I suspect it is more of a marketing thing - people who want stripes on their lawns are prepared to pay for it. One problem with a mower with 4 wheels is that you can scuff the lawn if you drop one wheel over the edge - this wouldn't happen so easily with a rear roller.

I've got a medium-sized lawn (60 x 20 feet) thats flat so I didn't need a big mower or one that was powered. I looked around and liked the Honda Izy. The base model in the range has a list price of £250. It comes with the same 4.5 hp easy start engine that they fit to their £500 mowers. The differences are that the deck of the mower is made from steel instead of a durable polymer that gets used on the £300-£400 models. In time this will rust through, but hopefully it should last for 10 years at least.

Having decided on this model, I then had a shop around. I found a number of local dealers selling it for £200 and then did a www.google.search for UK Honda Izy and found http://www.toolandplant.co.uk which was selling it for just under £165 including VAT and delivery for a brand new and boxed mower. They have another WWW site now set up for selling Honda stuff here: http://www.hondasales.co.uk/offers/honda_izy_lawnm owers/honda_izy_lawnmowers.htm

When I ordered, they were st
ill settin
g up their WWW sites, so I placed the order by phone. I also wanted the mower to be delivered to my work address, which meant that they couldn't take a credit card payment. Instead I paid by cheque. I posted this on a Thursday they delivered the mower the following Monday which was great.

The Honda instructions were a bit hazy - using cartoons to reduce the amount they had to translate into various languages.

It starts with the first pull on the cord and you don't need to tug it that hard. My lawn hadn't been mown for over a month in the autumn when I first used it. My old Black and Decker hover mower would have really struggled. With the Power of the Honda Engine, it sliced straight through it and I was finished in half the time.

A six months, the engine had some starting problems. I think this was caused by getting the carburettor clogged up a bit. If I cleaned the spark plug and squirted some Bradex Easy Start into the air intake then it would start and run for about 5 minutes before spluttering to a halt. It seems to be running on too rich a mixture. The problem eventually cleared itself and now it runs fine again.

From what I've read, it was probably caused by running the engine on the dregs of the petrol tank. Its best to fill the petrol tank little and often, and only to use reasonably fresh petrol. If you leave the petrol sitting around for too long, volatile parts of the petrol mixture evaporate leaving a mixture that is stickier. If you've had some for a month, then put it in your car petrol tank and buy a bit more for the mower. In the larger petrol tank of a car, the degraded petrol will be diluted with the good stuff.

When cordless robot mowers are cheap, effective and can deal with having my kid and their toys spread around the lawn, then I'll be happy to get one of those. In the meantime I'm fairly happy with my Izy.

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