Ryobi 40v 20" Lawn Mower Hack and Fix

I've had two of these Ryobi 40v 20" lawn mowers and both failed inexplicably shortly after I got them home from the store. They wouldn't turn on, even after following the suggestions of several troubleshooting videos. This is extremely frustrating since the whole point of these mowers is dependability and avoiding the hassle and mess of small gasoline engines. After searching the internet for solutions, I think I came up with a pretty good hacked solution to bypass the many points of failure located in the handle. As I suspected, this was what was wrong with my mower. The switches in the handle are very fragile and cheap.

WARNING: THIS HACK DISABLES SAFETY FEATURES. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK AND ALWAYS REMOVE THE SAFETY PLUG WHEN THE MOWER IS NOT IN USE.

You will first need to take the top off the lawn mower and also disassemble the black panel on the handle, which contains the push button and the bail. It all comes apart with a T20 torx driver. Note that your driver must be long enough to reach into the recessed holes in the cover. The handle for raising and lowering the blade height comes off with two little Philips screws. Take everything apart and then follow the instructions in the video to rewire it to start and stop from one single switch driven by the bail handle. I was able to complete this hack with a drill, a few zip-ties, a bit of extra wire, and a few connectors I had lying around.

Thanks to Greg Larsen for posting this switch bypass video: Ryobi 40v Lawnmower Switch Bypass.
Greg bypassed everything by connecting the black, brown, and yellow wires that go into the controller box, resulting in a mower that starts and stops via the safety plug. I thought it would be better to be controlled by the bail handle, so I came up with this hack building off of his insight.

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