Keep your engine running great by following these Engine Maintenance Tips for your Toro TimeCutter Zero Turn Riding Lawn mower.
Visit www.toro.com/helpcenter for more helpful lawn mower maintenance videos.
Video Transcript
Consistent scheduled maintenance is the key to a long healthy life for any Toro engine. Let’s go over the basics.
Just to set the stage, we’re going to discuss maintenance steps based specifically on the engine made by Toro for the Toro TimeCutter Zero Turn Riding Lawn mower. If your TimeCutter has a different engine be sure to follow the instructions in your operator’s manual for that engine type.
Tip #1: Change the Engine Oil
Alright this first one’s a classic – changing the oil. See, engine oil captures contaminants and byproducts of combustion so naturally over time it gets dirty. That just means it’s doing its job. It also lubricates and protects the inside of the engine.
Change it after the first 5 hours of mowing and then about every year or 100 mowing hours after that. A quality 10w30 synthetic oil like this one is a good choice. It’s refined specifically for an air-cooled engine and is designed for easier starts. Next up an oil filter.
Tip #2: Change Your Oil Filter
Change it every time you change your oil and the right filter designed for a Toro engine is key. The oil filter is designed to remove as much tiny debris as possible in order to help the engine run at its best. A good oil filter has top quality filter medium inside it, as well as rugged internal components and a tough outer housing. Another important filter to maintain is the air filter.
Tip #3: Maintain the Air Filter
As you might guess, it’s there to keep particles from entering the combustion chamber of the engine. Cleaner air means a cleaner running engine. There are two parts to your air filter, the outer foam, which keeps out larger debris and the inner paper filter, which keeps out the small particles.
Be sure to clean the foam element every couple of months or at least after twenty-five hours of operation. Replace it every year or at least after 100 hours. More often if it’s dusty or dirty in your area. And then also service the paper element of the filter every 100 hours. Replace it if it’s still dirty after servicing or at least every 200 hours. Note that using a bagger will increase the needed frequency of air filter maintenance as well.
Tip #4: Replace the Fuel Filter
How about the fuel filter? In order for it to help keep contaminants from entering the engine through the fuel line, replace it annually or at least every two hundred hours of operation.
Tip #5: Replace Spark Plugs
Another item in the replace every 200 hours category – spark plugs. Just be sure that you first check the new ones with a gap tool before installation. If you don’t change them regularly, you risk getting them fouled or simply becoming less effective over time and that can lead to tough starts and lousy engine performance.
Tip #6: Check Out Toro Maintenance Kits
Well, we’ve covered a fair amount of maintenance and luckily there’s a convenient way to tackle it all. Check out our Toro Maintenance Kits. It has all the components we’ve covered, plus Toro’s fuel treatment, which is a fuel stabilizer that keeps gas fresher longer, slows down evaporation and actually cleans untreated fuel residue from the engine while you mow.
And, because the kit was carefully developed by Toro engineers you can be confident these Toro genuine parts are all designed to protect, fit and condition your Toro engine better than anything else on the market. Because of course Toro engines are made of Toro parts and you’ll want to keep it that way for the best performance.
So, protect your investment with scheduled maintenance. It’s easy, quick and best of all, it pays off by keeping your Toro products running at peak performance for many years to come!
