Massey 175 buying advice needed.

[Other Bob]

I'm going to go look at a Massey 175 this weekend and am looking for advice on things to check. I talked with the owner and he said that he replaced the head with a rebuilt head recently. He also said the tires were in good shape and everything was functional. He did say that it did smoke some at startup but ran strong.

It has the contential G206 motor, I wasn't worried too much about the smoke because I thought this would be cheap/easy to rebuild if necessary. However after doing some searching it appears that it's getting tough to find parts for this motor. So I'm wondering how much smoke is too much. I'll ask if I can run a compression test. Should it be dry, wet, or both?

I think it is a multi power but he wasn't sure, said he's never used it. He did say it was the three speed with hi/lo.

Price is $2700 which is near half of what 150 and 165s around me are going, although most of them are in slightly better shape.

 

[Other Bob]

So after more searching I'm feeling a little more confident about the ability to find parts for this motor. I found a couple of sites that list sleave/piston kits although they run about 3 times as much as the kit for the Perkins motor. Leads me to wonder how easy it would be to replace the motor with the Perkins if it did need to be rebuilt.

So if the multi power doesn't work does that cause problems or just missing gear ranges and freewheeling down hills. My property is fairly flat so that's not a big concern for me.