You should be aware that mower engines, being one cylinder and high RPM, have a somewhat limited life - especially in relatively long cycle duty. They get a lot of power from a small piston by moving it around very fast, so they put more wear on bearings than a slower engine with bigger pistons and more of them.
Automotive alternators, too, have issues with bearings failing after a while: 100,000 miles on a car at 50 MPH is 2000 hours run time - about 83 days continuous, and that's about where they go out. (Of course they'd probably be running at higher RPM than they would on your mower conversion so they might last longer, since they're at the mercy of the car engine's RPM and have to generate at idle but spend a lot of time at acceleration and cruising engine speeds.) That's a good match to the mower motor but would be horrible for a wind turbine. B-)
Anyhoo: If you end up running this for a couple hours a day figure on it lasting maybe a year or so. That will give you time to arrange other power sources if this is your only power supply. (You might want to get another junk mower and a spare alternator for a backup meanwhile.) If this is just to have 12V available intermittently, you're done.
Depends on how a person maintains them I guess. Most people never bother to change the oil in a lawnmower, they just keep adding oil, not thinking that they don't have oil filters and should change the oil frequently.
My riding mower is the same age. The motor runs fine, it's just everything else that falls apart on it, belts bushings and sealed bearing failures.[ Parent ]
