Troybilt BigRed 11hp Surging issue.

[juicegoose]

My 11hp troybilt with industrial plus engine is acting up. The tiller will start and idle fine but when I put the tiller in forward she almost acts like you've taken your hand off of the safety shutdown levers on the handles. The engine will randomly start to die and then either completely die or catch itself and throttle back up. It isn't the same as when you shut off the fuel. I noticed both while moving the tiller around the yard and also while tilling. The problem occurs especially while tilling. As it starts to happen I have to pickup the tines and it'll usually catch itself again. I clean out the carb every season and have done so twice this year because of the problem. I haven't changed the fuel pump though. Could it possibly be the issue? anything else I need to check?

 

[hawkeye08]

when my small engines do that, I add some seafoam and lucas injector cleaner to the fuel tank and let it run. so far, fixed them each time.

 

[juicegoose]

Thanks I run seafoam in every tank. This is a very random yet very distinct engine kill. Like I stated it is very much like when you take your hand off the forward killswitch levers. Very fast drawdown of engine. Not like it is starving for fuel but more like the something is loose somewhere. For the life of me I can't find it though.

 

[sixdogs]

Mine did that with stale gas. Fixed with new gas.

 

[DFB]

If its dying out with no load its more than likely fuel. How much use has it seen...I had a similar problem on my Troybuilt started easy enough and ran at fine idle or throttled up with no load but died right down and stalled under load (tine ground engagement). It was a valve/tappet clearance issue but this machine also had serious heavy use.

 

[juicegoose]

The gas is fresh and it does only seem to happen under load. I noticed last year that the tiller would run kinda rough toward the end of the season and when under load. I would say monthly use would be about 2-4 hours.

 

[oldnslo]

Double check ALL of the electrical wires for the ignition system and kill circuit. I had a wire pinched and chafed behind the flywheel shroud on a ZTR mower that drove me nuts trying to figure out why it would just randomly sputter or stall. Sounds similar to what you are describing.

My diagnostic method was to disconnect the kill wire from coil on this mower and then start tracing wires back.

Good luck since random failures are a real PITA to solve.

 

[TomSeller]

I had a tiller that did that. It would randomly die. I cleaned the carb and it still did it. Playing with the carb settings changed the pattern, but it still did it enough that I just swapped out the carb. I just figured it had some tiny piece of solid crud stuck deep in a jet passage. How old is the tiller?

 

[sixdogs]

Wait a minute--my Troybilt has a vent hole in the gas cap and if plugged gives similar symptoms. I forgot about that. There must be a dozen threads about that on here and I'll bet the majority involve Troybilts. Take the cap off and see what happens.

 

[rgr33]

I have a really old Troybilt that did exactly that same thing. Determined it was searching for fuel. Cleaned the carb and it fixed the problem,that was 3 years ago. It helps if you run the fuel out after each use.

 

[RalphVa]

Yep, I've fixed several carburetors with Sea Foam, too. Surging is often an issue with carburetors.

Ralph

 

[juicegoose]

Well guys over the weekend I started up the old beast and although she would still randomly throttle down, like when ever you release the forward interlock switch, slowly the problem cleared itself out. I would still get a little surging when I would engage the tines into the ground but that isn't anything new. I had put some more seafoam down her gullet too so maybe it helped cleanout whatever gunk might have gotten stuck. As a side note I always make sure to run the fuel out of the carb after every use. The carb bowl has a wicked habit of developing rust in the bottom of the bowl from the little bit of fuel that remains.

Now I just need a new throttle cable, Left tire, and tines. Throttle cable broke at some point in the line, tire likes to go flat, tines are looking like blades not tines.

 

[sixdogs]

I bought my throttle cable off EBAY for a great price.