Projects At Home During Lockdown

[Autech]

I'll lay you real money your B&S engine has either a cracked exhaust valve seat - or a piece of seat missing.
Early part of thsi last summer I went through this with first the rideon then the push mower. Sold the rideon and put a cheap Sanli engine on the push mower.
Even built one good 9HP B&S out of 3 for the rideon. Eventually bought something not B&S powered.

About 15min to lift the head and have a look.

I hear you sister. My Dad has a husky single cylinder B&S powered ride on. It needed a new head gasket at 200hours and a few weeks ago wouldn't start at a lowly 400hours.
Dad decided not to inform me for a few weeks and went about replacing the battery and start solenoid before I even had a look. Few ring arounds and googles showed it to be the decomp on the camshaft failing, managed to get it pulled apart last weekend and back together on Wednesday last week hours before the quarantine kicked in. If my Dad had not had that for the next 4 weeks he'd have gone mental so I decided it was a necessary journey to make.

Having repaired it I can only surmise that B&S are total piles of shit with some of the dumbest designs in history, the decomp on the camshaft relies on about 5mm of cast steel to not fail at any stage to keep the thing running. I'm no fancy engineer but surely they'd look at that when designing it knowing it won't last?
Lets just say his next ride on will not have a Briggs in it.

[Bonez]

Well pulled the tin cover of the thing, then removed the flapper, starter assy, fuel tank/card in one peice and coil.. Then gave the out side of the motor a good clean with industrial concrete cleaner we used for cleaning hangers/workshops using course scubbing brush and tooth brush.U?se the compressor to blew away most of the crap. Plenty of magnitising on the rotor. After clean the B&S sticker was intact. It's a 148cc donk. Pulled the the head. Ext valve looked fine and no seat cracking. The Inlet valve looked odd but the seat looked fine. Bore looks fine for the age too. The chassis is in great condition. Found my WORKMATE compression gauge(rubbers still in excellant nick) and Morrison mower multi tool as well.Found this link on B&S torque settings http://www.small-engines.com/torque Found the Parts breakdown and Operatio/Maintenance manual easy enough on the B&S web site.

Threw the head into the cleaning solution to soften up the carbon deposit. Just having a late lunch of cheese n oinion toasty and cup of coffee. Really injoying this tinkering.

[russd7]

a good clean with industrial concrete cleaner we used for cleaning hangers/workshops

curious to know what the concrete cleaner is that you use, i have some harlem/danish oil that i need to clean off the floor at work, haven't found anything that will move it with any form of ease yet

[sidecar bob]

I had a shift around today & put the Katana 1100 in the working space.
I bought this bike off Robbie Dean in 1984 & hadn't owned a car in my life at this point.
It got an absolute hiding for the next four years, doing everything from commuting, touring, which was basically just thrashing it from town to town, track days etc.
By '88 it had done close to 100,000km was flogged out in every way, swingarm bearings, steering head bearings, fork seals, rear shocks, it was smoking & low on compression, the mufflers had rotted off it & 5th gear was whining like a bastard.
I took it off the road & stripped it down to the last bolt & nut, had the frame blasted & painted & put it back together, with all new parts as required, making my own four into one into two exhaust system out of part of a rotted out cycleworks system & a pair of turbo flow car tailpipe mufflers, which still looks styley today & sounds mint.
I also had it painted black at the same time, this took the best part of a year, as finances allowed, I was 21 at the time, (I had only just turned 18 when I bought it)
By this time, I had bought Robbie Dean's first GSXR1100G race bike, which was also road legal, the first one that Suzuki released to the public, with chassis number 000003 & engine number 9 & had a Morris J4 van.
Things were never quite the same once I got it back on the road, the GSXR was absolutely untouchable & I had a four wheeler, life had kind of moved on & the Katana has been semi retired ever since really.
Anyway, back to today's activities, the rego has been on hold since 2000, & its probably done 20km in that time, although it's been fired up & run a few more times in that period.
Today the bodywork got taken off & I removed & dismantled the carbs & brake master cylinder.
The carbs were in quite good nick, probably in part because I always turned the fuel off & ran it dry every time I ran it up.
The master cylinder wasn't pretty. I not sure I'm going to get this one going with bits that are lying around the house.

[Bonez]

curious to know what the concrete cleaner is that you use, i have some harlem/danish oil that i need to clean off the floor at work, haven't found anything that will move it with any form of ease yet

Sorry any labelling has gone. Comes in a blue garbage bag size plastic bags and is very heavy. It comes in crystaline forma bit like soap flakes and you should use groves playing with it otherwise your hand skin dries up pronto.

Got the mower going and left in running for 5 minutes to the inconvenience of herindoors.Turned it off and I'll let it cool down and retorque the head. Ddn't have a spare head gasket,the old one looked fine, so just added another 5 in-lbs to the OEM setting. I'll see if it restarts after the retorque. Sidecar Bob was kind enough to send me some tips on the engine and I've printed it out and will laminate it with Connies A4 laminator.

Connies just handed me a home made egg burger for dinner. Yum yum.

[F5 Dave]

just read your comment with your apology and i must say i am now offended, but only because even tho work is only 600m from where i live i still cannot go down there and potter in the workshop or play with the CNC, makes to much noise and we have one very grumpy neighbour.
fucker reminded me of what i am missing

Well if it makes you feel better that wasn't an apology really, I was just poking fun at any kristians by apologising about the carpenter. I didn't say Jewish carpenter because I didn't want to be associated with conspiracy zealots.

[russd7]

Well if it makes you feel better that wasn't an apology really, I was just poking fun at any kristians by apologising about the carpenter. I didn't say Jewish carpenter because I didn't want to be associated with conspiracy zealots.

ah that makes me feel all warm an fuzzy inside my response was very much tongue in cheek and i picked up your reference in your original post.
on a brighter note, once i get the obligatory morning zoom call out of the way i am going out to was and polish one of the bikes

[Bonez]

Let the mower cool down and did the head retorque. Tried starting again this time with the air filter on. No go. As it was darkebing it was a good time to check for spark. Nothing so I'm going to follow up with some of Bobs suggestions,

The gung under the cover when I started....

[speedpro]

I found the little lever to kill the spark when you want to turn them off was a problem. I removed the whole gubbins and it starts good as gold. You just need a screwdriver to short the spark plug to stop it.

[sidecar bob]

Pull the breather cover off the side of the motor that's held on with two small screws.
That's the tappet cover. Check that there's enough clearance. The only way to set the tappets is to pop the valve spring off by pushing the spring retainer down & moving it to one side, taking the head off & removing the valve & grinding a whisker off the valve stem.
They're very hard to start hot with tight tappets.
To get to the points, undo the flywheel nut & leave it on the top of the crankshaft.
Put a large screwdriver under the flywheel, lever up & hit the top of the crankshaft with the nut flush with the top thread, with a copper hammer.
It should bounce off the taper. Find a strong bit & be careful not to punch a hole in the top of the crankcase.

[Bonez]

FINALLY!! Starting reliably with almost every pull of the cable. Man it's a loud sucker. Generious application of CRC 5.56 and fine sand paper sorted out all the contacts. As with projects like this there is aways something lestover, It's part no. 261027- LINK. vane Assy but it was never connected to the vane. It just sat under the cover and I found it during the degung. Anyone got a pick of it actually fitted? I think I've got an idea it connects between the vane and the auto choke but was never fitted when we got the mower....

Just need to get an nicer puller cable unit now as this one does not retract the cable fully at times.

Cheers for all of the suggestions/input guys. Figured out what all the adjusting screws are will fiddling.

[sidecar bob]

Heres a clue
https://www.ebay.com/itm/OEM-Briggs-...edirect=mobile

[Bonez]

Heres a clue
https://www.ebay.com/itm/OEM-Briggs-...edirect=mobile

Awesome. Bacisly it is redundent if the spring is long enough to hook up to the vane so no need for it on my mower.

[jellywrestler]

lots to do, but this has been sitting in the laundry for too long, easy to hang up out of the way , Excelsior Corgi, civilian version of the WW11 paratroopers Welbike

[sidecar bob]

lots to do, but this has been sitting in the laundry for too long, easy to hang up out of the way , Excelsior Corgi, civilian version of the WW11 paratroopers Welbike

What is the black contrivance photoboming the left side of pic two. Watsonian?