How now, mechanical cow? goat?

Last winter, when Jim and Maria moved south, they left us with their old Bolens lawn mower since they were going to be moving into an apartment. The Flower of My Life has a propensity for being in the wrong place whenever one of the mowers breaks down, and most recently she was mowing on the Lawn Chief when the quill in the mower deck discombobulated itself. We needed to get another grass-whacker contraption into operation, and a likely candidate was the Bolens.

Unfortunately, my Blossom had previously tried out the Bolens and discovered that it would not run properly; it had a broken gas tank. The engine is a Briggs and has a gas tank with a sheet metal body crimped to a pot metal top. It was obviously not a candidate for soldering. Draconian (hey, Draco was simply a misunderstood Democrat) measures were called for. I made sure I could put the broken piece back into the top of the tank as it was supposed to fit.

Then I got out my old epoxy. I originally bought this to glue my heirloom Apple mug back together after something got dropped on it. The package says 90 seconds. It did not lie.

I barely had time to get the broken piece back into place. To make extra certain, I mixed a second batch and coated the top of the tank near the break to seal any cracks.

Sadly, the impact of whatever broke the tank in the first place caused the pot metal to bend slightly before it broke. The little ear is no longer at 90 degrees to the tank top. Also, having had some prior experience with this particular epoxy (I do NOT trust the Apple mug's handle, and it is simply a dust catcher in the display cabinet now) I figured I had better back up the repair.

The proper thickness of sheet metal for the strap was a problem. I had some 1/16" strap, but that would be too heavy. Galvanized duct would be too light. I finally settled on a left-over scrap piece of metal wind brace, from which I cut the flange. From there, I bent and formed a bracket.

It fit acceptably.

Everything bolted back up.

I filled the tank, primed the carb, started the mower, and mowed the lawn.