TYLER, Texas (KETK) — During the winter, your lawn equipment sits for months gathering dust, and cobwebs, and it has a greater chance of having issues in the spring.

“A common problem is your little pump primers that a lot of your lawn equipment have, this will go bad, dry rot, age,” said Jason Blakeney, owner of Blakeney Hardware.

Blakeney said your spark plugs could be another problem.

“When you are running 2 stroke, the biggest problem is running too much oil in your fuel or not enough oil in your fuel which will degrade your spark plug,” said Blakeney.

Jeff McCoy, owner of Outdoor Power Products of Tyler, said there is one thing you can do every year that can help prevent a lot of lawnmower dilemmas.

“Routine maintenance on them at least yearly to change the oil, air filters, spark plugs, fuel filters to keep everything in good working order and to make sure that you don’t have a breakdown during the season,” said McCoy.

He added that routine maintenance can be simple and quick reducing a major headache in the spring.

“That’s a 15, 20-minute thing that you can do every season that would take care of your lawn equipment the whole year,” said Blakeney.

Another issue that leads to problems can be bad gasoline.

“Really these days gas can go bad really quickly, it’s got ethanol in it, and that’s the number one culprit for starting issues on lawn equipment,” said McCoy.

Blakeney and McCoy said the best idea is to use non-ethanol fuel, but either way, it may be best to run the gasoline out before storing it.

“Sometimes it’s a good idea to dump the fuel, start over fresh, put a new fuel filter in it,” said McCoy.

They add you also want to check your tire pressure and batteries to make sure your mower is up to par.