See what I usually do, is when I am done mowing the lawn, I usually just
tilt the lawnmower up on its side, so that I can give the underneath a
quick scraping with a metal scraper to remove any debris, sense I have a
jerky neighbor whose a HUGE litterbug, and he likes to let his trash
blow all over the place. And while I try to avoid it and pick up all his
stuff that blows into my yard, sometimes I accidently run over rope,
string, empty bread bags, etc, etc, that he left in his yard, that blew
over to mine.

Anyway, if you were standing behind the mower at the handlebars, the gas
tank would be on the right side of the mower, and the oil tank would be
on the left side of the mower.

I would turn the mower up onto its left side, so that the oil tank would
be closest to the ground, and the gas tank would be higher up on the
top. The air filter would be facing straight up toward the sky.

This is when the mower would leak the gas through the air filter!!!!!
The mower would be up on its left side, the oil and gas tanks would be
facing the ground, and the air filter would be facing straight upwards,
but gas would leak out into the air filter and through it, getting all
over the mower and the ground!!!!

This is what I couldn't understand?? HOW can gas leak into, and through
the air filter, if the gas in the tank is toward the ground, and the air
filter right above it is toward the sky??? How can the gas LEAK
UPWARDS?????

So when I dropped it off at Sears, they told me that the crankshaft was
bent, and this IS what was causing the gas to leak through the air
filter, and that if I spent the $160 to have them replace the bent
crankshaft, then the gas leak would stop.

I figured that they were telling the truth, and with gas prices at
almost $5 dollars a gallon, I don't want to waste a drop of gas, so I
already told them to go ahead and do it, and make the repair!!!!

So now it looks like I am going to be out $160 dollars, and end up
bringing the thing home, and have it still leak gas!?

I know that when I told my father that they wanted $160 dollars to fix
the mower, he said "for a $160 dollars, you should just buy a NEW
mower!!!". I guess I should have listened to him, RIGHT???

The funny thing is, the mower is only 2 years old, and none of this
happened during the 1st year when I bought it brand new in 2006?? I
would always do the same thing and turn it up on its left side, so that
I could clean off any debris underneath. Then last summer, it started
leaking the gas UPWARDS through the air filter when turned on its left
side?????