You never know!

You never know what you have until, it's gone.

That is how a popular phrase goes. Well, gone or not, far too often we just don't know what we have. I had a rototiller and didn't even know it. Let me explain.

This story begins in 1990 after I got out of the USAF. While shopping at D&B I decided to buy a Briggs and Straton 5 horse horizontal shaft engine for no apparent reason. It was just that I had always wanted one. At the time, I had no particular use for the thing. I just memories of all the go-carts I never got to build because I never had a horizontal shaft engine to put on it. So the little engine sat on a self in the garage, brand new, for several years. Then one day I saw a tiller sitting outside a repair shop, engineless and so I bought it. Every thing I needed to put the tiller together with the engine was sitting in the garage, and in no time I had a functional tiller. This lasted about three or four years until the chain drive broke. I then pulled my engine off and junked the rest. I needed a new tiller, and the little engine was sitting on a self in the garage, again.

I was offered the use of a Troy Built that my brother-in-law had. It belonged to his mother, but she had sold the home where they needed it, and was doing a lot of R/Ving around the country. I brought the thing over in spite of the fact that it was in need of repair. In fact I eventually put the thing in the shop in hopes of having it fixed. When I got it back, it was returned, still non-functional along with some bad news. The tillers engine was obsolete and the parts it needed were no longer available. I took it back home and put it out behind the shed, where not even the ally trolls seemed to notice it. It sat out back for a couple of years - untouched. Meanwhile we spent a tidy sum at the equipment rental for a half day use of a tiller. The trouble was that a used (obsolete) engine was $250 and a new replacement Briggs and Straton was $450. Neither sum of money was going to be spent on a tiller that belonged to someone else. That would not be smart.

One day, at a family get-together I talked to Donna (the owner) and told her about the engine and all. She just waved it off and told me to keep the thing. So I did, but I still left the thing out back because I did not have the money to spend on fixing it. Then we moved. We bought the new house and I found a new use for a tiller. It works great to cut down the weeds before putting in a new lawn. We also needed it to break up the soil so we could level the ground under the above-ground pool. So I finally resolved to see what could be done. I brought the tiller over and removed the obsolete engine. Then I pulled out the old Briggs & Straton. Would you believe it? They both had the exact same output shaft, same diameter, same length. They also had the same bolt pattern in the housing and my old engine bolted onto the Troy-Built tiller like it was made for it. I did not have to buy anything, it was all right here all along. (I could have done this years ago!) After a couple hours work I had it up and running.

Funny how an engine I bought for no particular reason was exactly what I needed 15 years latter! You just never know what you've got until you take the time to really look it over. Makes me think, you know. What else do I have in these piles of 'junk' that I have been missing?

^-^ The wise (*v*) Ol' Owl () () --"---"---- Dan Willey