I got to thinking today about the amount of work I’ve done on lawnmowers and ATVs in years past for my friends and neighbors.... I should have a small engine shop. It’s amazing how little people maintain their equipment and you would be surprised at how many are older than me. I just know with the mowing and camping season about to start I’m going to have plenty of carburetors to mowers and generators to clean here shortly.

Marshall Bryan stayed busy as could be and made a good living for his family at his place there on College and Railroad with small engines and coal.

You probably could open a shop and do well.

If u can clean or replace a carb you'll have 80% of knowledge needed

I tell you.

I worked at a small engine shop for a while, and have a Bro-in-law who still owns one. The homeowner market is tough to make money on, commercial equipment pays OK and they at least will come get their stuff. Typically we would get so behind at the beginning of the year (weeks and weeks) that by the time we finished the mowers people would have bought a new one. We had to get a deposit to keep people coming back for them. Honestly I thought then that we charged way too much but not my decision. Nowadays, you can buy a cheapo carburetor on amazon for so cheap its not really worth trying to fix one, especially 2 stroke stuff sometimes its just impossible to get them back right.

Jason

I remember it well. It’s where my dad would go to buy his snapper parts

"Hey, get out of the coal!"

You could charge $50/hr and youd be quite a bit cheaper than the saw/lawnmower shop. On top of that, if you didnt stand and smoke cigarettes while you worked on them, your customers would be getting a heck of a deal. I figure cigarette smoking takes up at least 25% of the average saw mechanics time(from my past observations, if youre a saw mechanic and you dont smoke, calm down, im not talking about you.) At $80/hr or more labor at most places youre paying some fellow $20/hr to smoke cigarettes.. nevertheless, you could make some pretty good money and everybody would be getting a good deal. Everybody wins.

I feel you NSDQ. I have been thinking about this for some time. But, i have to ask, how would you charge a dumb ass who brings a mower with no gas in it. I put gas in it and i starts and run?

My last buddy that brought me a mower that couldn’t run had never serviced it. I drained the mud that was in it, changed all the filters, cleaned the carb, changed the belt, greased the spindles and sharpened the blades..... that thing was running like a top. He was getting ready to just give it away because he thought it had broke down.

I got my neighbors generator out in the garage right now. He left it set up for 6 months with ethanol gas in it. I’ll clear his jets on his carburetor tomorrow and get it firing.

I bet there’s thousands of folks like this in the Athens/Madison area just waiting to spend money.

We may be on to something here.

If you set up a shop make it where customers can’t get to your work area to shoot the breeze.

I have a craftsman riding lawn mover in my garage cause a co-worker couldnt replace a head gasket and a shop wanted $600. Put it at the curb. It is 5 bolts, $15 gasket, adjust the values, done. Literally took 2 hours.