The 13 HP ?Honda clone has max torque at 2500 RPM, and is pretty flat up to that.
13 HP Gas Engine With Recoil Pull Start : Carroll Stream Motor Company : www.carrollstream.com Torque determines the "work " a engine can do. HP is how fast it can do it.
I can find no torque/rpm chart for the Chinese engines. I can only assume that the torque curve is the similar to a Honda. According to what I see on Honda engines, the torque curve actually drops off above 2500 RPM. It may be OK when run at 2400 RPM. Hard to say without some evidence.
I will concede the power point in this case but I do appreciate the link to the 13 HP Chinese engine. I have known about Carrol Stream engines for a while. I am more than a little skeptical about them. I cannot find any longevity data for those engines. I do foresee some problems with them as the cooling fan is made from a white plastic. As a general rule, white plastic does not hold up to sun light and will get brittle and fail is short order when compared to black plastic. In general I fall back on the adage that states "You get exactly what you pay for" and "quality comes at a price".
Just to give you an idea what $350 will buy, here are some purchases I made this year.
- A 16G with 50" deck for $350 It had dirt in the needle/seat.
- A Pro 8 with 30" deck and sulky for $350 (including gas to pick it up) It needed a battery.
- Two 4 wheel tractors for $350. One is a 8129 and the other is a 8162-B. Both came with good/fair 50" decks. Both of them run well. I had to put an exhaust valve in the K301 before it would run well. All I did was put gas in the 8163-B and it ran.
- I can't remember what I paid for my 5665 with steering brakes. I think I paid about $400 for it. It needed a new condenser.
Now you see why I dumped the L8. When I can get a newer tractor that runs for about the same money as an engine, it makes the L8 not worth messing with.
For the record, I traded the L8 for a old style brush. I didn't want to part out the L8. Had I done that I would have been left with a large casting and a bunch of parts that I would have to take to the scrap yard and that is a pain.