Briggs Intek pushrods

TobyU....please understand that I am not challenging you....just trying to understand what you are saying......you say you work on them everyday...I don't and I am looking to learn something here...you mention that after running....the engine should not be idled down below full operating speed...so then are you saying to just shut it off at full throttle?...and for pulling to the eventual parking spot......run it WOT?......I believe that mowing decks and snow blowers should be operated at WOT which is typically ( from what I have read) 3300-3600RPM...or the blades are just not spinning fast enough to actually cut as opposed to breaking the grass off or to blow snow....I know you took some time to write up your post, but if you could explain it a little better I sure would appreciate it...thanks

I hear ya. I repair a lot of stuff and agree that most people don't maintain anything - even their $50000 cars! I know the difference and this one was impeccably maintained and I can assure you - nothing impeding the airflow. Only 113 hrs and I get a failure that appears to common but more troubling is its been going on for years!! As a engineer, I find that unacceptable. You can't keep blaming the customer on everything and not making a change. There is a difference between bad design and customer-induced damage. Most manufacturers have their screw-ups but the good ones admit it, fix it, and move on. When a customer calls with a case as above, (well maintained, low hrs, common failure) they support it by covering all, if not most of it. My response from Deere was useless. The "box checker" simply looked at the calendar and said "expired!" This has left an indelible mark. The $100 it would have cost them will now cost 100x that as a result. The worst is Briggs continues to make these engines using the same weak design?!

I think we're on the same page. Unfortunately for some people wot or wide open throttle means something different than standard full speed operating position which is normally where the rabbit symbol is and the click is detent on the throttle cable. A lot of them have a choke so when you push it further up here in choke and basically 3/4 at the notch is the full running position. Many other John Deere is have a separate choke lever so all the way up is full operating position.
Technically speaking there is no real wide open throttle on lawn mowers as that would be carburetor fully open an throttle plate fully open and it would override or blow up in short order. This is because we have governors that are self-regulating. The wide open throttle term mainly came on cars where it really is what it says. The pedal is all the way to the floor and the throttle is absolutely horizontal and open as far as it can be.
I actually speak all this into my phone so it's not that much effort. Forgive me if there are weird errors are weird weird choices sometimes at the phone pics.
There is no harm in idling down and engine for the last 10 or 15 seconds before you shut it off but that is after you have already driven it and parked it and it's parking location.
People fail to realize that once a mower is hot , when they turn the blades off that's really not that much a reduction. Blades that are already up to spinning speed that are not cutting any grass are relatively easy to keep spinning however... When you're driving the mower it is still moving the eight hundred- a thousand pounds that it has been doing for the past 2 hours so it's still doing all the work but it doesn't have but about a third of the cooling if its slowed down to idle low speed.
I really can't think of a Briggs & Stratton intek V-Twin or even a single overhead valve that has ever come in with a slipped valve guide that wasn't obviously very old, very neglected or abused, or very dirty once the shroud was removed.
Running lean can also increased temperatures greatly but usually, if they're this lean, they don't really have much power and people are looking for Solutions.

Ahh the dreaded valve guide. I see it on pretty much all brands of V-Twins though Briggs is the most popular. I generally replace them with a used head just because I have a large stock pile. ( If that tells you something? ) Weather replacing with a new or used head, peening has become the new norm. I will not repair one on the engine. IMO a proper repair has to be done on the work bench. After peening the guide in place the valve needs to be seated (lapped). Most seats are pretty close and some are dead on. I have yet had to cut in a new seat after peening. All in all this is what it is, what we have to work with, and we're still hoping for a brighter future.

Yes, the original van guards were made by Daihatsu in Japan. If I remember correctly they later brought production and started making vanguard's in the US. I couldn't begin to tell you when that was without some research and if the quality has remained the same or not. I do recall the original vanguard's had black shrouds and I believe all the new ones had the red. Maybe this was the distinguishing difference.
I sent you no reason to worry about getting rid of or even consider a replacement engine. There's nothing wrong with the Briggs overall at least not catastrophic. I will say that the single overhead valve is a more durable engine and will give you less trouble than the twin just because fewer Parts but also because the twins will snap her on in a heartbeat when they get low on oil. Keep them at or slightly above the full mark and even the twins don't usually have any catastrophic failures.
I understand that if you don't do the work yourself a replacement head is over $400 repair at a shop and even fixing your old one will be three to four hundred.
Same with the head gasket. Around here it's between three and four hundred dollars so most people just sell the mower or junk it or give it to someone... But they move on.
If you're doing a head gasket repair yourself it's about 40 minutes to an hour 5 and well under a $20 repair.
If someone is worried about a repaired head failing, I will go back to the fact that I would rather have a repaired one than a new one because you're back to statistics. A certain number of new ones are going to fail and you replacing the head with an exact same quality duplicate of the one you had the first place which is already failed. That doesn't still the greatest confidence.
I just repair them to make them run and to be more than likely better than they were from the factory at least as far as not slipping a valve guide but if you have any concerns you could certainly go above and beyond and make sure that valve guy would never move!
There was a long discussion on here a while back about someone who insisted on welding it, and he wanted to weld it on the front and the back which is way Overkill. Now there is a problem because these are dissimilar metals and aren't supposed to be welded anyways but probably with a nickel Rod or something it can be done. My preference would be to drill and pin it. This could be with a Preston roll pin on one or two sides or it could even be screws better screwed in to be set screws and Loctite upon installation.
I would bet any amount of money a repair like that would be far stronger against the guy slipping than any brand new head you could buy because those are just friction fit.
You can even have a machine shop do it as they should know what pending a valve guide is or have some method to make sure it absolutely is not going to move.
So I say repair it and get it running properly and forget about it.
I will grant you that the average homeowner doesn't put that many hours on their machine and a few people will ever wear one out due to number of hours. Most machines will be replaced due to age and condition, or the need for a repair.
it's also greatly variable do to the area because some people cut all your long and some people only mow for a few months.
I routinely see Riders of the 42 to 48 in cut that are 13-23 years old. I'm sure those owners are fairly happy with their Briggs & Stratton overhead valves and intek V-Twin for giving them that amount of life and still running well.
Having said that, most of these machines only have between 220 and a 340 hours on them.
I can count on one hand the number of machines I get in a year with over 400 hours.
A couple that stand out over the past two to three years are an 850 hour John Deere with an FC602V Kawasaki, an ariens with a Briggs intek V-Twin with 960 hours on it, a commerial ztr with a little over 1200 and an old wheel horse single IC briggs with analog meter showing 2800 or 4200 something quite ridiculous like that.
I don't do that many riders a year but I do well over a thousand push mowers every season.
Those don't have hour meters but I have done the math on a few that I am familiar with.
Most people simply don't keep a push mower over 15 years but I do know a few that are over 20 years old that have at least twelve hundred hours on them with no replacement engines, rebuild, internal engine repairs, or even head gaskets. One in particular is one of the overhead valve Briggs on a snapper.
It's card had to be replaced 2 years ago because at 19 years old it had literally worn the hole where the throttle shaft goes through so it has such a vacuum leak it wasn't running well. Most people can't wear out a carburetor, but my friend did.

Oh well, it is just statistics and numbers like Tom said.
We just need to be accurate and realistic about things. Just because one person has a bad experience with a low our machine , it probably is an outlier and it doesn't represent the overall quality, or lack thereof, for all of those engines.

Don't get me wrong, I've gone on many rants about the busted acrs in the Briggs overhead valves because I feel it's an epidemic level because I have seen so many in my small little town of only 40,000 people. But statistically speaking, Briggs made and makes millions of those engines so if the failure rate was very high I would be seeing far more than I do.
It just sucks when you're one of the statistics! Or when you have to fix a handful of the statistics.

Well Tomw0 , times have changed
Pre WWII every part on a production line had to be inspected & measured because no two were anywhere near the same.
When you pull old engines apart , you see all these little numbers , letters & other stampings put there by the inspectors so parts could be "blueprinted" to be within working tollerances .
However now days production like tooling makes parts that are all to within .00001" of each other so the "blueprinting" of old is no longer needed.
It also has dropped the real price of small engines ( hours worked to buy it ) down by around 300% .
Because mowers are so cheap now days owners don't give a wrinkled rats rectum about maintaining the mower or understanding how it should be used.
IF their abuse caused a failure it is always some one elses fault , bad manufacturing , bad materials, poor design etc etc etc .
And like Toby every slipped valve guide has been on a filthy engine usually with valve lash that has never beed adjusted from day one and very often the owner will throttle down to go slow rather than lift their foot off the pedals

Thanks for all the great feedback and experience. I can understand how a neglected engine can fail but the frequency of this failure is just too high to ignore. A valve guide should NEVER move unintentionally - PERIOD! The fact that it does, apparently quite often, just screams POOR design. You can blame tolerance stack, Japan, heat, etc etc but the bottom line is it should NEVER move. A quick design review would find the root cause and I'll bet a minor change could prevent these early failures. If you keep blaming the heat, age, and the customer, you'll never fix it! (I hope your listening JD and B&S, hint hint)

Again, in this case, the motor was NEVER overheated, NEVER abused, NEVER dirty, and oil changed every year. At 113 hrs it should be barely "broken in". It was JD and B&S poor responses that really were unacceptable, hence the reason to look elsewhere.

I know that you are anti video but taryl has one where he repairs a kawasaki by drilling, tapping and using a set screw to hold the guide in place.

saltcar said:

Thanks for all the great feedback and experience. I can understand how a neglected engine can fail but the frequency of this failure is just too high to ignore. A valve guide should NEVER move unintentionally - PERIOD! The fact that it does, apparently quite often, just screams POOR design. You can blame tolerance stack, Japan, heat, etc etc but the bottom line is it should NEVER move. A quick design review would find the root cause and I'll bet a minor change could prevent these early failures. If you keep blaming the heat, age, and the customer, you'll never fix it! (I hope your listening JD and B&S, hint hint)

Again, in this case, the motor was NEVER overheated, NEVER abused, NEVER dirty, and oil changed every year. At 113 hrs it should be barely "broken in". It was JD and B&S poor responses that really were unacceptable, hence the reason to look elsewhere.

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Actually, this doesn't happen quite often. It doesn't even happen often. Those of us who work on these mowers all the time only see this infrequently.
And as we have stated, it's not just a Briggs thing. It happens on Kawasakis too and so many people think they are just the best engines out there.
Now if you want to talk about a design flaw that should have been fixed but has not it would be the single overhead valve Briggs head gasket failures! It's not a matter of if but when. They will all fail eventually and it is more about the heat Cycles than it is about the hours of use.
They didn't want to have a head bolt going into the intake runner and the design left too wide of a spacing between two of the head bolts on the right hand side by the lifter galley.
Every one of them that blows blows in the exact same spot in the exact same way.

Does every person who owns one of these engines have a blown head gasket? No! It only happens and probably 40 to 60% of them and that is usually and the years of ownership after year 8 or year 10.
Many people don't keep the mower long enough to have this failure because it often happens around year 12.

Most people having a head gasket needed to be replaced and the 9th to 11th year would not think it such a design flaw but I call it like it is.

The frequency of head gasket failure far, far exceeds the failures of slipped valve guides. Now do we want to throw in popped valve seats??
This too happens but even less often than the slipped valve guides.
It is also caused from severe overheating. I don't think I've ever seen a popped out valve seat where I would say it wasn't severely overheated and where I would say the tolerances were just incorrect enough till out to be a manufacturing defect. Every single one of them that I have ever seen was just perfect from the factory and would have never came out had the engine not have been hotter than it was supposed to be.
As I stated earlier, and others have concurred... It's almost always the same for slipped valve guides but it is more of distinct possibility for a guide to be just not quite as tight as the other ones in a batch of heads.
You also have to consider things like some people will let him over sit for a year or two and then get it running again. This can cause valves that actually stick open or closed and their guides. Same goes if they and just some water or left out in the rain. I have seen plenty of mowers mainly push mowers that had a valve stuck completely open. The only place that it can stick is in the guy. So when you start cranking the engine over and trying to get it to move it is trying to move the guide with it so that can loosen a guide that was otherwise fine.
You can take an engine that is just fine and let it sit for nine months to a year and a half and the varnish can build up on one of the valve stems. Then you fire it up and that extra friction is coercing the guide to try to move. This is not good in the grand scheme of things. Did you're mower set for any. Of time?? Did the carburetor ever have to be cleaned out or replace because it would not start?
As we said before, there's always going to be an outlier somewhere or some defects that rear their ugly heads early but for the most part there is no reason to avoid Briggs & Stratton engines.
The biggest fault here is the fact that on anything larger than a handheld leaf blower or string trimmer, the warranty is about more worthless than the paper is printed on. I never want to stand up or go to bat for the consumer or take care of the consumer. They always blame it on fuel related issue or operator error / lack of maintenance.
The simple fact is, they have painted themselves into a corner over the years by making items and competing on price point alone. They price them so cheaply that they don't make enough money to actually do the right thing for the customer and the Paradox is they can't make high-quality equipment because the vast majority of consumers by on price point alone and sound good features on paper.

If a company had the balls, or maybe the stupidity, to come out and make a high-quality mower and Market it as the two and three generation mower that's you use as a kid with your grandpa, then your dad used as you grew up, and then gave it to you when you got your first house... And price the mower at 80 to $100 more then what's in the store now but make it high quality and durable and last 20 years ,some of us would be willing to buy it.
The problem is, if we didn't need another one for 20 years they wouldn't be selling us a mower very often now would they?
Word would really have to get out. These are the best most durable mowers but how are we going to know that until they've been in your house for 15 to 20 years and then you start telling everyone??
I basically think they, with the help of cheap price Focus focused consumers who accept he Disposable mentality, have painted themselves into a corner that just can't be escaped from.

So we deal with the hand we're dealt and what we can easily obtain. We learn if there's any tricks to make them last longer, like keeping them at proper full running speed , taking the shroud off every one to three years and cleaning the cooling fans , and learning how to do our own repairs so it's not that big of a deal or expense when something does go wrong.

TobyU said:

Actually, this doesn't happen quite often. It doesn't even happen often. Those of us who work on these mowers all the time only see this infrequently.
And as we have stated, it's not just a Briggs thing. It happens on Kawasakis too and so many people think they are just the best engines out there.
Now if you want to talk about a design flaw that should have been fixed but has not it would be the single overhead valve Briggs head gasket failures! It's not a matter of if but when. They will all fail eventually and it is more about the heat Cycles than it is about the hours of use.
They didn't want to have a head bolt going into the intake runner and the design left too wide of a spacing between two of the head bolts on the right hand side by the lifter galley.
Every one of them that blows blows in the exact same spot in the exact same way.

Does every person who owns one of these engines have a blown head gasket? No! It only happens and probably 40 to 60% of them and that is usually and the years of ownership after year 8 or year 10.
Many people don't keep the mower long enough to have this failure because it often happens around year 12.

Most people having a head gasket needed to be replaced and the 9th to 11th year would not think it such a design flaw but I call it like it is.

The frequency of head gasket failure far, far exceeds the failures of slipped valve guides. Now do we want to throw in popped valve seats??
This too happens but even less often than the slipped valve guides.
It is also caused from severe overheating. I don't think I've ever seen a popped out valve seat where I would say it wasn't severely overheated and where I would say the tolerances were just incorrect enough till out to be a manufacturing defect. Every single one of them that I have ever seen was just perfect from the factory and would have never came out had the engine not have been hotter than it was supposed to be.
As I stated earlier, and others have concurred... It's almost always the same for slipped valve guides but it is more of distinct possibility for a guide to be just not quite as tight as the other ones in a batch of heads.
You also have to consider things like some people will let him over sit for a year or two and then get it running again. This can cause valves that actually stick open or closed and their guides. Same goes if they and just some water or left out in the rain. I have seen plenty of mowers mainly push mowers that had a valve stuck completely open. The only place that it can stick is in the guy. So when you start cranking the engine over and trying to get it to move it is trying to move the guide with it so that can loosen a guide that was otherwise fine.
You can take an engine that is just fine and let it sit for nine months to a year and a half and the varnish can build up on one of the valve stems. Then you fire it up and that extra friction is coercing the guide to try to move. This is not good in the grand scheme of things. Did you're mower set for any. Of time?? Did the carburetor ever have to be cleaned out or replace because it would not start?
As we said before, there's always going to be an outlier somewhere or some defects that rear their ugly heads early but for the most part there is no reason to avoid Briggs & Stratton engines.
The biggest fault here is the fact that on anything larger than a handheld leaf blower or string trimmer, the warranty is about more worthless than the paper is printed on. I never want to stand up or go to bat for the consumer or take care of the consumer. They always blame it on fuel related issue or operator error / lack of maintenance.
The simple fact is, they have painted themselves into a corner over the years by making items and competing on price point alone. They price them so cheaply that they don't make enough money to actually do the right thing for the customer and the Paradox is they can't make high-quality equipment because the vast majority of consumers by on price point alone and sound good features on paper.

If a company had the balls, or maybe the stupidity, to come out and make a high-quality mower and Market it as the two and three generation mower that's you use as a kid with your grandpa, then your dad used as you grew up, and then gave it to you when you got your first house... And price the mower at 80 to $100 more then what's in the store now but make it high quality and durable and last 20 years ,some of us would be willing to buy it.
The problem is, if we didn't need another one for 20 years they wouldn't be selling us a mower very often now would they?
Word would really have to get out. These are the best most durable mowers but how are we going to know that until they've been in your house for 15 to 20 years and then you start telling everyone??
I basically think they, with the help of cheap price Focus focused consumers who accept he Disposable mentality, have painted themselves into a corner that just can't be escaped from.

So we deal with the hand we're dealt and what we can easily obtain. We learn if there's any tricks to make them last longer, like keeping them at proper full running speed , taking the shroud off every one to three years and cleaning the cooling fans , and learning how to do our own repairs so it's not that big of a deal or expense when something does go wrong.

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Thank you for the detailed response. Sounds like you've got much experience to tap on and that means a lot. The head gasket issue is troubling and I think the reasons you state are spot on. Manufactures need to "compete" and often the cost is a driving factor. In the case of the head gasket, a good validation program would have exposed that early on (before production) It doesn't cost more to space the bolts properly (if that's the cause) but if you don't properly test designs BEFORE release then you accept having weaknesses as you mention. I've been to too many product development meetings where "schedule" trumps doing the right thing or statistics say "it will be out of warranty before it fails, don't worry about it" Possibly the case here. Profits are easily tracked but dissatisfaction is a bit difficult. Most surveys are useless but I can tell you that if a customer feels cheated in anyway they usually tells others and look elsewhere.

BTW, it seems "full running speed" is a common theme here. I'm sure mine is close to "spec" but I'm wondering exactly what RPM that is? Based on my dealer's response so far, I have 0 confidence they set it up correctly when I purchased it.

The "correct" operating RPM varies because it's typically set by the manufacturer of the machine. In the old days most of these engines were set up to run at 3600 RPMs. And by old days I mean prior to around 1995 or so.
You will rarely find one on a residential grade mower after that that runs that quickly.
Most are in the 3300 to 3400 range but I think I've seen them as slow as specd at 3150.
I would think anything's 3200 -3400 is quite safe but I like them to be 3300 to 3400.
Also helps keep your blade tip speed up to give you a better quality of cut.

On the head gasket issue, I really don't think they did enough testing to find out it was going to be a problem and once they found out they realized it was going to cost too much, or at least cost money, to fix the problem.
For them it wasn't that big of a deal because most of them are far, far out of warranty when they fail.
I also don't think even regressed testing would have shown the issue because it takes so many stop-start cycles and even years for them to show up.
I'm sure some smart person early on looked at it and said "That's an awful lot of space between those two head bolts. What if that gasket fails there?"
And either the right person didn't hear these comments or they agreed that it would be fine.
The most common competing engine at the time was the Kohler Command which of course has a much better reputation of being almost Bulletproof. You are very, very, very rarely see a Kohler Command single with a blown head gasket.
They had an issue with the head gaskets on their twin commands up until around 2003 and they did it the right way! They redesigned the gasket and offered a head kit for it I even came with new studs or bolts. The new gasket was unbelievably beefed-up better and thicker than the old gasket that failed.
Briggs wouldn't even bother to make a better gasket! The gasket you buy to replace your failed one is the same little thin non combustion fire ring gasket that you're taking off.
A $1 Improvement in the head gasket could have probably prevented all future failures. Then, gee! For a great idea why wouldn't they start putting a newly , better designed gasket on all of the new engines they make?? I guess that would be too much effort.

So, see, I'm clearly willing to bash them when they deserve it and call it like I see it. It's just that slipped valve guides are not epidemic proportions of high failures and most all of them can be prevented.

I don't feel you can prevent the head gasket issue and there's very little you can do to even slow down the process.
I don't really agree that most of them are caused by flooded out cylinders from leaky carburetor needle valves and seats.
That's certainly an issue and that could attempt to hydrolock or completely hydrolocked an engine and cause extreme pressures but I see far too many of them that have never laid or been hydrolocked.

Let's not forget the ABS, anti backfire solenoid, or after run or after fire solenoid as it's sometimes called.
It is there to do one thing and one thing only: the rent the loud pop that can occur after shutdown when the fuel oh, without it, would still continue to get sucked through the engine and not burn due to lack of ignition...pooling the vapors in the muffler and when it hits the end of the muffler with the rich oxygen environment POP!
It's typically referred to as a backfire but it's really not.
Even when this part is functioning 100% correctly it still doesn't always do its job as many of these engines will still pop especially when you shut them off at full RPMs and don't throttle them down for eight or nine seconds right before shutting them off.
I feel that this repeated popping on shutdown short is the life of some of these head gaskets. It certainly isn't better for anything.
It wouldn't do it every time or be super consistent but if the muffler is full of gas Vapors and it pops, if the exhaust valve is open it could at least cause another combustion explosion inside the cylinder and if a combustion explosion is not timed when supposed to be, as in Pre ignition oh, it's harder on parts because the piston is still continuing to try to go up but the combustion is blowing it down.
Smooth and no loud popping or boominh has got to be easier on the head gasket than popping every fourth or fifth shut down.

I share a similar story with my customers but I don't tell them the Loncins are half price wholesale. I don't think there's that much of a difference but I make it sound even worse. I tell them that push mower manufacturers found out a few years back that they could save 10 to 20 bucks by going with the chinese-built loncin over the Briggs & Stratton and I could save 40 or 50 bucks on a rider by doing the same.
So that makes it sound even worse. For a mere few dollars they changed horses in the middle of the Stream and when a completely different direction just to be cheap.

As far as I know, the Kohler XT line were the first ones to be made in China for Kohler and I think loncin made those too. Lifan made a lot of the early import ones and now they seem to all be loncin.
Then MTD had one made for them and then Toro did the same.

I don't like the fact that this has occurred however let's be honest about something but we're talking about them.
Even though I don't like the loncin engines, ( I'm also not a Honda fan) I can't think of a single one that I seen a catastrophic failure on one. Even the ones I have seen that have hit stumps Etc have fared quite well with not blowing the whole side of the block out and they have a nice thick meaty crankshaft that bends or twist less frequently than the newer Briggs.
The new Briggs is absolute junk in my opinion. The new design carburetor is 100% plastic except for the two screws that hold the bowl on and the brass throttle plate.
Instead of having only one hole that could clog up and cause running issues like in the older Briggs that dominated the industry for over 20 years, or two possible holes the main jet and what's left of the old Idle Jet or secondary jet which can cause idle surging oh, like on the Hondas and all of the Honda clones loncin and imports, they have a stupid plastic jet tube assembly with a metal ball, and one to two jets pressed in to them.
So there are more holes to clog up and now these engines have taken over the lead of being the most likely engine to have running issues due to clogged up carburetors where Honda used to have that record.
And that's not the main reason they are junk! The main reason they are junk is there are only designed to be around about eight years or so and they want you to have to replace them. They don't want you to be able to keep this mower 20 years but that gets back into what was being said about the manufacturers hurting themselves I make a product too durable .
These new Briggs have a plastic camshaft gear inside. It's about a 2 and 1/2 in gear and I fully see us having a lot a failures in the future.
These things will stop running and the valves will stop moving up and down or they will at least jump time and they will be disposed of because the repair bill will make it cost prohibitive.
the only good thing is there will be plenty of available free parts for the people who work on them for the ones that get junk. It will be an easy fix too but not worth the time.
It's just not worth the time involved to remove the blade, drive belt and pulley Etc, remove the engine from the deck, take the sump cover off, clean off all the stuck on gasket around the base of the engine and the sump plate, pop the new camshaft in, cut the new gasket on and all the bolts in oh, and then both it all back to the deck and put everything back together.
I can see us getting these camshafts in the future from eBay for 9 to $15. Heck, the gasket from Briggs would cost more than that currently but they will be aftermarket kits that come with a nice cheap gas get to so Parts should be 12 or $15 to get your motor running like new BUT it's the time and or labor!
The shop price for the amount of time it takes to do that is going to make everyone throw their mower in the trash and buy a new one. Even if you give me the mower oh, and give me the parts... I don't care to waste the time to fix it!
Would be quicker to go grab an old Briggs or a loncin or Honda where all I have to do is a 8 to 10 minute carburetor clean out and it will be up and running well.

I absolutely hoard all the old Briggs engines I can find for push mowers. Are they the best engines ever made? No. That would be the Kawasaki that came mostly on the John Deere Aluminum deck mowers that started out being silver and then were later painted green.
Those things are Beyond commercial quality but for many years, if you need to buy a part it will be priced as if it's gold plated.
But these older L head engines are far more adequate than the average homeowner needs and you would have to be cutting commercially, and heavily to ever wear one out from hours of use.
Even then, if it was maintained competently like having the oil changed every 50 hours even if that's every 5 days to a week, and having the head bolts torqued because every last one of them loosens up on the three around the bottom right corner which can eventually cause a blown head gasket but normally only after 15 plus years and then only sometimes.
This were done, most all of these old Briggs would live through two or three lawn mower decks they were mounted on and still be running strong.
They don't have rubber timing belts dipped in oil like the Honda, pushrods and rocker arms or rocker arm studs to loosen up or jump off, plastic inside the engine or it can fail. They rarely ever have any camshaft problems or wear them out and the valves don't even like to get out of adjustment unlike the overhead valve versions especially the Riders which are typically at least two times wider than what they're supposed to be if not three times when they finally get around to being checked by someone with a feeler gauge.

Enough of my long-windedness for this morning. Take care guys

^^ Darn, that post was long. Sorry, brevity is not my strong suit.
At least I didn't hit the character limit! Yes, I've done that on a forum before.
It was the hardest 253 characters I've ever had to filter out!!

Berts...

Is this the copper gasket place:


To add a slight bit, when I was looking for a machine with wider cutting swath, I determined, by my 'seat of the pants' standard, that AYP made a better product, and Kohler Commands were an excellent product. I was able to find that combination in a 1997 model and have been generally pleased, except for the deck height control Who in their right mind wants to adjust the cutting height by tenths of an inch? The knob makes the height infinitely variable, within the limits, but having several mechanical 'notch' settings would have been less expensive, stronger and more reliable. FWIW
tom

Wow! Lots of good stuff here and all spot on! I too get frustrated when wrenching and find 12 different sized fasteners and inadequate wrench clearance! I can also say I've seen them designed by engineers who've NEVER had a wrench in their hands or any practical experience. I've even hired some of them who had 4.0 averages but they can't change a spark plug!

Thanks for the input and venue to squawk about it. I agree on the "old Briggs" statement about durability - they were solid. My beef this time (that started this string) is really about the poor response I got from JD and Briggs about a (slightly?) common failure on a machine that had 0 reasons to blame.

I'm not a super big John Deere fan but mainly because I see so many people to give them a free pass or think they're better just because they're painted yellow and green and are willing to pay 200 to $300 more for the same quality of lawn tractor in the big box store just because of the name.

I guess my biggest complaint is the fact that they take the factory parts and put them in their own John Deere bag and Market the price too much. Also that Kawasaki will make engines to John Deere specs and then offer no support for them so you have to buy the parts from John Deere if you want to be exactly sure they are the perfect right part.

I don't really think the head gasket is designed to be the weak link there in case of hydrolocking but if it serves that function it would be better to blow a gasket than to snap a rod.
Most engines don't have this extra long space and some even put a bolt in that area even if the threads stick slightly into the intake runner.
And frankly, I don't think Briggs is that caring or that smart! They just screwed up and their dimensions and even though it's a long span, figured it was good enough to get by.

There didn't used to be better gaskets available and there didn't used to be aftermarket ones. It's a shame that Briggs didn't improve their own gasket to fix the problem. Also, do you remember three years ago when the price almost tripled?? I was buying those gaskets at a local shop for $6.48 and then all the sudden they went to $19!
They've leveled out some but thanks to that you can go on eBay and get a complete gasket set with a 31 series and a 33 series and all the accompanying gaskets for about nine or ten dollars.
I have read for a people have cut two and three head gaskets on the same machine and I don't see how this happens. I have never had one come back to me that I have replaced. Most of these are just done with standard Briggs & Stratton brand replacement gaskets too since I got a good price on them and bought several cases of them.
I do make sure it is clean nicely and not just wipe off with a shot cloth like so many techs do. I even often put the head on a flat piece of metal and some sandpaper and mill it down until it is flatter than it was knocking off any high spots.
I also use the proper tightening pattern and torque the bolts with an inch pound torque wrench. Overhead valve head bolts on Briggs & stratton's are the only thing I routinely use a torque wrench for. I don't routinely get inside of engines with connecting rod bolts but those get torqued to. All the other bolts just get done by feel. Every l-head mower that comes in for a general service gets the head bolts tightened and the bottom three on the right corner are always lose but they just get tightened in a crisscross pattern with a 3/8 drive ratchet by feel.
I actually find that the torque spec is too low on some things and I have been known to be ape-fisted over the years but as long as I don't snap them off or strip them off, they will probably hold better than at the factory torque spec and maybe not loosen up again.
Funny also how there's no standardization. The old ones didn't have any washers on them and then the newer ones started having washers but Toros almost always have washers but sometimes not on every bolt. It's totally haphazard.

Anyway, I think it's good that we have now pretty much fully discussed everything that's wrong with lawn mowers and outdoor power equipment.
We can all learn stuff even the ones who think they know everything which I'm guilty of sometimes.
Even if we don't 100% agree. Like oh, the head gasket being blown by hydrolocking. I would have to say that over 90% of the ones I get in that have blown head gaskets do not have leaking carburetors and did not previously but I'm not saying it can't or doesn't happen.
People need to realize that statistics don't always apply to them or in their area. You also can't say things can't happen just because you've never seen it. If you do this long enough you will see things that just don't make any logical sense that aren't supposed to be possible or aren't supposed to happen.
Then there's some things that just happened at Super higher rates in certain areas or conditions that you may see all the time but others may not. Hydrolocking for instance would be extremely related to the type and quality of fuel in the machine because that's what damages the rubber needle valve tip and pits the seat. I would imagine some places have multiple times higher cases of problems with these and others have very little.
This would be influenced by the gas, the climate, length of cutting season Etc.

Great talking to everyone though!