What is better made, or more useable, now than in the years past?

[Ian]

Rick, if it doesn't have a choke it won't start without ether. Is your splitter engine from the era where witless morons thought a choke was unnecessary? I think the witless designers were trying to compensate for the witless end users who would forget to open the choke. There may be some issue with the carburetor as well such that it isn't sucking fuel like it should at pull-start RPM.

 

[Rick]

I think the rod knock on the mower is because of the splash oil system and from running it on such uneven slopes & hills. I only use it for tight, small areas that's tough to get the riding mower into. I think because of that there might be a battery mower in my future. As for the log splitter Briggs I'll just use the ether, one can has lasted the last two years. Just the tiniest little squirt is all it takes cause I don't wanna blow the piston through the head.

I also asked Briggs how they suggest changing oil on the log splitter cause they didn't see fit to put a drain plug in it. Their recommendation, just turn it over and drain it through the oil fill/dip stick. I says to them that's a great idea, should be able to do that with one hand cause it only weighs 600 pounds. I bought a small hand pump and just suck it out.

 

[Pistolero]

Rick, if you can find a mower with a Tecumseh engine, jump on it. Far, far better small mower motors
in my experience. Change the oil annually, run the engine dry of gas at the end of the season or only use
ethanol free fuel and you will likely get long service. For bigger motors, I find that the Kawasakis do pretty
well on my JD and Great Dane big mowers.

Bill

 

[smokeywolf]

Brings back memories. Had a 5 HP Briggs & Stratton in my first mini-bike (1960). Bike was called a "Flea" and was made and sold by "Bug Manufacturing", which was just a few doors down from Pony Express (gun shop) Sport Shop in Encino, CA on the South side of Ventura Blvd. just East of White Oak Blvd.

 

[Pistolero]

The 5 hp was more than we could afford at that time. We had a 3.5 Briggs lawn mower engine, horizontal
shaft, but rebuilt it with parts that would fit from salvaged vertical shaft 3.5 Briggs engines which were
much more common and we could find in the dump or get donated to us. Zero budget is hard to
work past.

Eventually my brother traded it for a big crate of flathead Ford speed parts. Offy aluminum heads,
Isky cam and lifters, high compr pistons, Edelbrock triple deuce manifold and carbs. We pooled our
very limited funds and bough a 1954 Mainline from the junkyard "with a good engine" which we had
to return to the junkyard. As we winched the engine out of the car, I suddenly broke out laughing so
hard that I couldn't continue winching. My brother thought I had lost it until he came around my side
and saw what was making me laugh. It was the 3/4" wide 8" long slot in the side of the oil pan with
the edge pooched out.....where a rod had exited. We eventually got all the parts built in to a
flathead and ran it around for a while. This was in the late 60s, when flathead speed parts were
considered outdated. You could buy a HemiCuda, or 400 Firebird, why would you fool around with
some old 60 hp flathead and try to soup it up? So broke teens could have some stuff to play with.
I expect those speed parts would be worth some $$$ today in good shape.

Bill

 

[Bret4207]

Briggs went down hill big time int he past couple decades, so did Kohler. They both still make some good engines but they aren't the consumer lines. You're actually better off getting a Harbor Freight engine (Honda clone) if you cn make it fit where it needs to go. The good old days of a Briggs running for years and years and years with just the barest of service are long gone.

Bill, there aren't too many folks with such a high opinion of Tecumseh as you have. They were the problem child of small engines for the last 15-20 years they were made. I think they're about out of business now. They made some fine engines but getting parts was a bear. Kinda like Clinton, another company that made some great small engines but just couldn't stick with it. But Tecumseh made about the best snowblower engine going for many years. They seemed to have solved the "doesn't want to start or run at -25F" issue long ago. I still ahve a snowblower with a Tecumseh on it, awful lot of plastic compared to the old one we had at my grandfahers.

I wouldn't buy anything not made by (or at least cloned) by Honda in the single cylinder small engine line if I had a choice. Honda is just amazingly high quality. I'm sure there is someone out there that hates them and horror stories, but they seem to be few and far between.

 

[Rick]

Haven't seen a Tecumseh in a lot of years, do they still make them? Thought about getting a Honda mower even as much as I hate the idea of imports but I gotta admit, Honda has the small engines down pat. Would still have the same problem of a splash oil system and the anything but flat ground it would be running on.

As for changing oil, I change oil in all my small engines twice a year. Either at the end of or the beginning of the season and again in the middle of the season. I change oil in my trucks way too often also, I'm an oil change junky I guess but there's nothing like fresh clean oil to keep a motor (and me) happy. I do use sober gas (no ethanol) in all my small engines, chainsaws & all, never have a problem with bad gas come spring time. Only exception to the oil changing is the standby generator, it gets changed once a year whether it needs it or not. Unless there is a lengthy power outage it runs 10 minutes twice a month & I figure the oil should be good for four hours run time at idle.

 

[Pistolero]

The newest Tecumseh I have was bought about 1990 or maybe 95. Still starts and
runs fine, but getting a bit tired. No idea where they went after that. $99 on sale
hardware store brand mower, stamped steel deck, but a 3.5 Tecumseh that seems
to last forever. Prior to that, a $35 used mower that ran from about 1980 until the
new one was bought, 90-95ish. That one was old when I got it, ran great until it
was just worn out. The internal design of the older Tecumseh's at the bottom
tier 3.5 vert shaft mower motors was way above Clinton and Briggs. Both of them
had no cyl sleeve, just running rings on aluminum, no valve seats, just valves seating
on aluminum, splash lube and worthless flapper air vane pretending to be a governor,
just really ran wide open, not good for long life.

I have several small Honda motors, they are fine machines, but quite a lot more
money, of course.

Rick we bought a $750 Honda mower, self propelled about 3-4 years ago. It is a heavy
beast, thank goodness it pulls itself! Really works great, hard to fault any part of the design,
except the fiberglass/plastic 'something' deck seems to be really thick and heavy. Probably
will last forever but makes the mower a bit of a beast. My wife and I both love it, though.
Does a great job picking up leaves with the bagger attachment, which is never used with just
grass. No more raking the yard.
Agree totally on oil, Rick. I say "Oil is cheap and easy to install, compared to rings and bearings"
although not as cheap as it used to be.

Bill

 

[Bret4207]

Rick, hill sides were the forte of the old 2 cycle Lawn Boys. I don't think LB is still around, I think they got bought out by another company, Toro maybe? I know there are still 2 stroke lawn mowers made, but no clue what they're like anymore.

Bill, many of the old Briggs, Kohlers, Wisconsins, Clintons, Lauson, Maytag, etc were iron and steel. I still have some old cast iron Briggs here that just need some tinkering to get them back in shape. Hardened valve seats would have been nice, that I agree on. I think the thing that impresses me with those old girls is that even though a lot of them seem so outdated and we see so many "modern" changes that could be made to improve them, they still perform great if you get a decent example. Same with magnetos- outdated, cantankerous and run by nothing more than faith and magic, and yet a good one is a marvel of utter reliability. It's kinda like those VW engines you like or my old Gravelys, not a thing modern about them, but they work their hearts out!

 

[Pistolero]

Bret the ones I didn't like were a die cast aluminum block with ALUMINUM cyl bore and ALUMINUM
valve seats. Not iron. I am fine with iron that has no hardened seats, still will run a long time. But aluminum?
Really poor.
My father had a few of the old iron Briggs, like 5 or 7 hp size, big horizontal shaft, used it to run an irrigation
pump in Fla. Good old machine. Had a weird ratchet handle/motorcycle roller chain kind of a ratcheting
pump handle start. Never saw another starter like that.

Bill

 

[Ian]

Honda wins hands-down. The clones are good for the most part too, but many of them don't use Honda consumables so getting service parts can be a drag.

The B&S I've been working with is an older Vanguard and is practically a copy of a GX-390. Good industrial engine with a zillion hard hours on it running a steam cleaner pump, almost no cylinder or valve wear aside from the rusted parts. I got the cylinder cleaned up without any acid, just used oiled emery paper backed with my paw. It's ugly but I bet it runs. If I put 20 more hours on this thing in the rest of its life I'll be surprised, so expectation and demand are as low as the cost. If my demand changes I'll drop $400 on a 13 horse Predator.

 

[Pistolero]

If you don't mind a bit of oil consumption, surface finish on the cyl wall is far less critical than most think.
Piston ring GROOVE wear and cyl wall SHAPE/size are far more critical issues. It will probably be fine, as long
as carb and ignition systems are happy.

Bill

 

[Bret4207]

The all aluminum (al/magnesium alloy actually IIRC) were the bottom of the line consumer engines IIRC. Started seeing them in the late 80's I think or real cheap lawn mowers, the $99.00 jobs at your local discount house. Some of them would run a surprisingly long time. Others ran 1.5 hrs total and died. Used to find them at the drop and swap at the dump, back when we had dumps, or on the roadside for the taking. If you got 2 or maybe 4 of them together you could often make 1 running unit. Carbs on those were awful. No rebuilding or repair to them. The recoil starters were plastic nightmares. But they were built for a bottom of the line market. the people who would have been better off hiring a neighbor kid to mow the 20x50 foot lawn out front, if such a neighbor kid still existed, which they didn't, hence the cheap lawn mower. The same bottom of the line mentality applied to weed whackers, generators and chainsaws. I made some fair money fixing that cheap junk. Parts were often a case of putting $30 parts in a $10 machine. But people wanted them fixed. Who was I to argue?

Agree on your assertions on ring groove and cylinder wear. Smoke drives the bugs away too.