Kohler vs Briggs & Stratton

[yellowsocks93]

Well we used it extra heavy duty in our apple orchard. But compared to the Craftsman we got back in 2000 with a Tecumseh motor it has held up much much better. We took apart the old Briggs motor in shop class and we could not get the thing to run.

 

[Bird]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( So I decided to go with Tecumseh. Their push button primer doesn't work very well. That 3-4 pumps stated in the manual is usually more like 20+ for mine, and then it always dies once before finally running. )</font>

I had a bad experience with a Tecumseh 30 years ago, and like a lot of us are perhaps prone to do, I wouldn't buy another Tecumseh. However, my daughter got a year old LawnBoy self propelled walk behind mower, with the Tecumseh engine, with the house she bought a couple of years ago. And it recently got to acting similar to yours; had to pump the primer more (it says 5 times on this one), and it would start and die a couple of times before it would keep running. When it did start, had to let it run a minute or two to warm up before starting to mow or you'll kill the engine.

So a couple of weeks ago, I sharpened the blade, changed the oil, cleaned the air filter, and put a new spark plug in it, but didn't even try to start it when I finished. And we've had a lot of rain, but it finally was dry enough this afternoon that I decided to try it. Pumped the primer 5 times, and it started on the first pull of the rope and sounded like it was ready to go immediately. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif I shut it down to empty the grass catcher 9 times and it restarted every time with one pull of the rope.

 

[BIGUN]

The one I have is on a Craftsman self propelled mower. It has pretty much acted this way since I got it. Like yours, it does start right up after it has warmed up. It still beats those messed up B&S engines I referred to that usually took some manual priming by squirting gas down the carburetor to get them going. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

 

[SPIKER]

Someplace I was looking at soem links (thought it was THIS post which has a link to the briggs site which described the different design changes in each setup.

as in bottom rung only all alum, side valves.

middle rung IC series with cast iron sleves but still side valves then

top rung was pressure lubed with over head vbalves and cast iron sleves. (forgot the name of this series but has somethign specific like the IC series.)

anyhow I posted some responces info form here to a different web site i visit, (handyman club .com)

/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Mark M

 

[JeffRey30747]

The Tecumseh on my Lawn General (Farm & Country Store brand) push mower behaves about the same. The only difference is that every spring I have to pull the plug and squirt in starter fluid to get it to start at all. Sometimes I have to go through this three or four times but once it starts, it is good for the season. Then I have to do the five to fifteen pushes on the primer bulb if it is cold.

Jeff