There is one person behind this site, and messages are read by that person. Corrections get priority over everything else, and anything about safety gets priority over corrections.
Prefer email? hello@stillworthstarting.com reaches the same inbox.
Five kinds of message, and what happens to each
A correction — a wrong price, a mis-transcribed part number or specification, a dead source link, a claim the cited source doesn’t actually support. This is the most valuable message this site receives. Every figure here was compiled from a source and dated, and catalog prices in particular drift fast. If you can, say which page and which figure. It gets checked against the source and, if you are right, fixed — with the change noted on the page and the verification date reset. The process is set out in the Editorial Policy.
Anything on this site that reads like an instruction to do something dangerous. This site is meant to explain what repairs cost and involve, never to walk you through chain work, blade work or fuel-system disassembly. If a page has drifted across that line, that message jumps the queue ahead of everything else. The scope rule it would be breaking is written out in full in the Editorial Policy.
A question about where a number came from. Ask. Everything here should already link to its source at the point of the claim, and if it doesn’t, that is itself a defect worth reporting.
A media, syndication, or reuse request. Short quotes with attribution and a link need no permission. Anything more — republishing a compiled table, using the data elsewhere — is covered in the Terms of Use, and the answer to a reasonable request is usually yes.
A privacy request — what we hold, deletion, opting out of personalized advertising. Send it here and it will be handled as described in the Privacy Policy.
Four things to ask somebody else
Diagnose your machine. This is the first of the four, and it is worth being straight about rather than quietly ignoring.
The author is not a small-engine mechanic — that is stated plainly on the About page, and it is not false modesty. This site compiles published information; it has no way to tell you why your mower is making that noise. A remote guess about a specific machine would be worth less than nothing, because you might act on it.
What genuinely helps instead:
- Find the engine’s numbers, not just the machine’s. On a gas mower the machine and the engine are often made by different companies, and parts, manuals and specs follow the engine. A Toro or Ariens snowblower is the exception: its engine carries the machine maker’s own brand, and the machine’s number is the lookup. The model, type and code are stamped on the engine itself, in positions Briggs publishes by machine type — on a walk-behind, above the spark plug or on a plate between the valve cover and the air filter; on a riding engine, the valve cover or a tag on the blower housing. Where to find every plate is here, and why it matters is here.
- Start from the symptom, not the diagnosis. Won’t start, starts then dies or surges, smoking, and snowblower won’t start or the auger won’t turn each name the likely causes with a price against each. What they are ordered by differs, and each page says which: the snowblower page by what the machine is doing, with old fuel at the top because Toro ranks it first, won’t-start by the manufacturer’s own order, smoking by color first and by cost only inside the white-and-blue half, since its six black-smoke causes run in Kohler’s own order, starts-then-dies by machine and then by what to check first.
- If fuel has been spilled, if the machine is running indoors or in a garage, or if a chain or blade moves when the engine is idling — stop. Do not wait for a reply from a website. Those are dealer problems, immediately.
Recommend a repair shop near you. We have no local knowledge, take no referral fees, and have no way to vouch for anyone. What we can offer is what shops charge, and what they keep if you decline the repair once you are on the phone with one.
Perform or supervise a repair, or talk you through one. See the safety scope in the Editorial Policy. This is a firm no, not a liability formality.
Take advertising or sponsored posts. No page on this site is for sale, and no manufacturer, dealer, retailer or warranty company has any input into what is published. Display advertising is not running here yet; when it is, it will be handled through an ad network, described in advance in the Privacy Policy. Pitches for sponsored content, guest posts, or link placements are declined without reply.
How long a reply takes
This is a one-person site, not a support desk. Most messages get a reply within a few days. Corrections are usually acted on faster than they are replied to, so if you see the page change before you hear back, that is why.
Privacy requests are handled within whatever timeframe the applicable law sets.