Do Lawn Mowers Take Regular Gas? All You Need to Know About Running Your Mower

As proud lawn owners, we are sure that you are familiar with the regular mowing routine and maintaining your pride and joy. Whether you have a trusty old mower or just picked up a new one, you will need fuel to run it.

Now it’s time to fill up, and you need to ask yourself, do lawn mowers take regular gas?

Lawn mowers use regular unleaded gas that you can pick up at your local gas station. However, certain types of other fuels aren’t appropriate for use.

But which fuels should you avoid? Don’t worry; we are here to guide you on which fuel is the best for you and which to steer clear from.

This article will give you a little overview of lawn mowers and explain exactly which fuels can or can’t be used in your lawn mower.

Let’s Learn About Lawn Mowers

Before we talk about fuel; we need to talk a little more about lawnmowers.

There are a huge variety of different lawnmowers from ride-on mowers, manual push mowers, motorized push mowers, and hand-held lawn trimmers.

Today, we are focusing on rotary mowers, as they are the most common and use gas to power them.

Rotary mowers are what probably first comes to mind when you think of lawn mowers. They consist of a body that houses the engine, which sits on four wheels. This is pushed along by a sturdy metal handle.

They are great for small lawns, making them popular for domestic uses. They cut the lawn using one sharp blade that rotates at high speed.

Rotary mowers have a two or four-stroke combustion engine that runs on regular gas. We will go into this in a little more detail later.

The benefit of having a gas engine in your lawn mower is that there is no cable to plug in that you could run over by accident.

Do Lawn Mowers Take Regular Gas?

If you are using regular unleaded gas, then you can use it in your lawn mower.

This is not the case for all forms of gasoline, however.

Here is a quick guide on what fuel will or won’t work for your lawn mower.

Due to the engine that lawn mowers have, it is very important to choose the right fuel for your machine to work. If you use diesel by accident, for example, it could damage your lawn mower engine irreparably.

The ideal gas to use for lawn mowers is E10, 87 octane fuel. This means the gas is 10% ethanol and can handle an appropriate amount of compression. Most regular unleaded gas will fit these criteria.

As we mentioned earlier, your mower will have a two or four-stroke engine, and while they both use regular gas, there is one key difference between them.

In a four-stroke engine, the oil is kept in a separate part of the engine. In a two-stroke, however, the oil must be mixed with the gas in a specific ratio. We suggest referring to your lawn mower manual to learn the proportions you need to mix.

As a guideline, we don’t recommend using petrol over E10, because that level of ethanol is not suited to lawn mower engines.

What is the Best Fuel to Use in My Lawn Mower?

Our recommendation is to use any form of unleaded gas.

This is for several reasons. Firstly, it’s easy to get hold of. Simply pop down to your local gas station and fill up a can. You can even pick it up at the same time as you fill up to save time.

 Secondly, although gas is very expensive, regular unleaded is just that little bit more affordable than other premium fuels.

Unleaded fuel ticks all the boxes for great fuel and will keep your mower running with ease.

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is the cheapest kind of lawn mower to run?

At the end of the day, lawn mowers can be expensive to run because of the price of gas.

If you are on more of a budget, you might consider a manual lawnmower like a cylinder push mower. These will only cost you the initial investment to buy the mower as it doesn’t use petrol or electricity to run.

Do lawn mowers need premium gas?

While premium gas will work perfectly well in your lawn mower, is it unnecessary.

As you can see from this article, regular unleaded gas works perfectly fine, so using premium gas would just be a waste of money. Save the good stuff for your car and stick with regular unleaded gas for your lawn mower.

Conclusion

So, at the end of the day, the general answer is yes, you can use regular gas in your lawn mower.

As long as you avoid certain fuel types and stick to unleaded, your mower will run along happily. Our recommendation is to buy regular unleaded gas in small amounts. This will save you money and ensure your mower runs on clean, fresh gas.

Don’t forget to stop by our article on understanding the choke on your mower. Now, off you go and mow that lawn!