It asks what failed before it asks for a quote — and on a $250 machine it will tell you there is nothing to calculate.
Why it asks what broke first
Every other repair-or-replace calculator opens with what is the quote? and divides by the price of a new machine. On this equipment that arithmetic is mostly theater, because the failure type has already decided it. A carburetor is $45–$100 against a $230–$450 gas push mower — 10–43% of a replacement, across the whole range. An engine is $260–$800 on the same machine, which is 58–348%. Neither of those is a close call, and neither needs a sum.
So this calculator is failure-type-led. It asks what broke, and only asks for a quote when the answer is genuinely near the line — which, on the corpus behind this site, is a minority of failures.
One row looks like the exception: an electric starter at $95–$250 is 21–109% of a new gas push mower, a single component spanning from obviously fix it to worth more than the machine. It spans that far only because of the machine it is divided by. None of the 13 gas push mowers in Toro’s, Troy-Bilt’s and PowerSmart’s own stores, read September 10, 2026, has an electric start. The cheapest walk-behind in the three that does is Toro’s self-propelled 21464 at $599, and against that the bracket is 16–42%. On a mower that carries the part it is a repair, and the 109% is the price of downgrading to a pull cord, not of replacing like for like.
What the tool actually does with that span, stated exactly, because this paragraph used to overclaim it. Until September 5, 2026 it read “the tool treats it as one … the break-even sum has to be done properly,” and the tool does not do the sum across that whole span — it short-circuits at both ends of it. Measured on the gas push class: $95 against a $450 machine is 21% and returns fix it, nothing to calculate; $250 against a $230 machine is 109% and returns replace it, nothing to calculate. The first is the right answer. The second is right only for a reader willing to trade the button for a cord: enter the $599 electric-start machine as the new price and the same $250 is 42%, which returns fix it. Neither needs arithmetic — that is the tool working, not failing. The sum belongs to the middle of the range, and there it asks you for a remaining-life figure first, because no service life is seeded for any class.
Where every default comes from
Every number the widget starts you with is listed below. This table was audited against the widget’s source on September 4, 2026 and two of its rows described constants that are not in the file — see the note under it, because how they got there matters more than the correction. It was audited again on September 5, 2026, when three brackets were withdrawn from the snowblower classes.
| Constant | Value | Source | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Failure brackets — ten repair types | $25–$2,700 across the set | LawnStarter, updated December 27, 2025 | August 2026 |
| — of those, split by machine class | carburetor, belt, blade, engine replacement | The guide’s own two-column tables, walk-behind against riding | September 2026 |
| — of those, withdrawn on the three snowblower classes | drive belt, pull cord, engine replacement | Withdrawn September 5, 2026 — mower data, and 24–56% of this site’s own figure for the same job | — |
| Replacement machine price, 9 classes | $130–$13,225 across the set | Lawn Love, December 2025 — six mower classes from its mower guide (cheapest to dearest), three snowblower classes from its snowblower guide (typical band) | August 2026; re-read September 10, 2026 |
| — of those, the full spread printed on the three snowblower classes | $120–$15,000 | The snowblower guide’s cheapest and most expensive rows, shown on screen beside the narrower typical band | August 2026 |
| Replacement machine price, chainsaw and trimmer | $200–$680 | Echo and Stihl product pages | August 16, 2026 |
| Replacement machine price, pressure washer | none | No published band found for the class | — |
| Further-repairs reserve | $125 walk-behind, $175 riding | LawnStarter’s two published class repair averages | August 2026 |
| Riding-class hour rating | 1,000 hours | The bottom of the 1,000–1,500 range dealers quote, per A1 | August 2026 |
| Hours-to-years divisors | 20 and 50 hours a year | Two rows of the assumption column in the lifespan table | September 2026 |
| Service life in years | none, for any of the twelve classes | Removed September 4, 2026 — see below | — |
| Wear short-circuit threshold | 50% of the replacement price | No external source — this project’s own judgment. See below | — |
| Obvious-replace threshold | 90% of the replacement price | No external source — this project’s own judgment. See below | — |
The two thresholds are not sourced, and this table did not admit that until September 5, 2026. Every other row above traces to a document. These two do not. The tool short-circuits to fix it when a wear item is under 50% of the replacement price and to replace it when any repair is at or above 90% of it, and no published rule anywhere behind this site states either cut — the corpus contains no half-of-new-price test, and grepping 42 files for one returns nothing. They are a judgment about when a calculation stops being worth doing, and they are named here so that a later read does not mistake them for findings. What keeps that judgment honest is that the reader is never asked to take the cut on trust: the verdict card prints the actual percentage, gives the reasoning, and attributes the threshold to nobody. The 50% cut also carries a stated rationale — below it a consumable is deferring a replacement rather than competing with it, and above it a wear repair is usually no longer routine, because a $200 carburetor job on a $320 mower generally means the shop found more than a carburetor.
Three brackets were withdrawn from the snowblower classes on September 5, 2026, and the reason is that a snowblower was being priced off a lawn-mower cost guide. Every installed bracket in this tool comes from one surveyed source, and that source is a mower page. Where the same job has a figure on this site’s own snowblower repair page, the mower number was well under it: a drive belt showed $35–$150 against a reconstructed $223–$251, a pull cord $30–$50 against $130–$210, and an engine $260–$800 against $964+ on a part that lists at $763.99–$936.25 by itself — a mower bracket whose midpoint is below the cheapest snow engine Briggs sells. The first two only mislabeled a repair the tool was going to call fix it either way. The engine row was deciding: on a two-stage with five years left, the mower midpoint of $530 returns repair and the reconstructed $964 floor returns replace, and the break-even is $700 — below what the cheapest snow engine costs unfitted. All three now show no bracket and ask for a quote, which is the same rule the auger row has always followed. The carburetor and electric-starter brackets are still mower data and are still shown, because nothing here replaces them; they now say so on screen, as does every other out-of-class bracket, through a general label rather than a hand-written note per combination.
The service-life row used to say the constant was unsourced and had to be sourced or removed. It was removed, and this page did not notice for four days. Until early September the widget seeded eight to ten years on the riding classes and eight on the two walk-behind ones, with a note crediting Consumer Reports for a five-year floor that appears in no Consumer Reports document. Both were withdrawn rather than replaced, because the only third-party mower lifespan this site can cite is CR’s “a decade or more” and it is advice resting on no stated test. The field is now empty on every class and the tool asks for it instead of supplying it. A page whose whole job is to be the audit trail for another file drifts from it in exactly one direction — it keeps describing constants after they are gone, and stays silent about the ones added since.
The other stale row claimed a $75–$140 shop labor rate. There is no labor rate in the widget, hardcoded or otherwise, and there is no place in the arithmetic one could enter: the tool works from installed brackets and from the reader’s own quote, never from hours times a rate. The figure is real — it is the spread across eight shops’ published rate pages — but it belongs to that page, not to this asset.
What it will not tell you
- Whether your shop’s quote is fair. That is a different question, and it needs the fee schedule rather than the part price — shop rates, eight shops compared.
- How to do the repair. This site costs repairs; it never instructs them. The procedure belongs to your machine’s manual and a servicing dealer.
- Anything model-specific. Every default is a class figure. Your machine’s own numbers are on its data tag, and which engine you actually have is usually not the brand on the hood.
Defaults dated in the table above. The shop-rate row is the one that moves fastest and is re-read on a three-month clock; next scheduled review December 2026.