83 Horse Tiller with 13 HP Honda

:Welcome1:

Welcome to the forum and great looking tiller! From what I can see, you did a great job on that bumper.

Did you have to fabricate anything to get it mounted or was it basically plug and play?

We'd love to see some more pics of the whole machine. It looks really good from the front.

Again, welcome and enjoy the forum. :fing32:

Thanks for the welcome DJ,

The tiller is in good shape. I bought the 83 PTO Horse off the original owner in 89 and it's always been garaged since then. The tires could pass as new.

The engine was a simple bolt on. I got it from Small Engine Warehouse and it came complete with the adapter plate and pulley. This engine has a 22 mm shaft so the original pulley being 3/4" would not transfer over. The pulley alignment was about 1/8" off but that was easy to fix with an additional spacer.

I juiced the engine with oil and gas and it started first pull. It ran a little on the lean side so I changed the original #92 fixed main jet to a #95. Runs really smooth even at full throttle.

I replaced the tine seals about a year ago and the bearings and bronze gear looked good. I'm also running the HD hardened tines.

Crazy Horse

Nice lookin' job. You'll probably have to overfill the engine w/ oil to be sure it gets plenty of lube when the horse is sunk in the hilt. I don't know if the Honda 13 is pressure lubed or not. Ford8 clued me in on that when I put the 6 1/2 HP greyhound on my horse. I tried it his way of overfilling it but eventually had to disconnect the low oil shutoff because it would still shut down when tilling full depth.
Mike

mla2ofus said:

Nice lookin' job. You'll probably have to overfill the engine w/ oil to be sure it gets plenty of lube when the horse is sunk in the hilt. I don't know if the Honda 13 is pressure lubed or not. Ford8 clued me in on that when I put the 6 1/2 HP greyhound on my horse. I tried it his way of overfilling it but eventually had to disconnect the low oil shutoff because it would still shut down when tilling full depth.
Mike

Click to expand...

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>>>>>>>>>.that is a good point--and one , I bet a lot of folks don't think about--running for long periods of time on un-even surfaces...
:thanku:

Thanks for the tip, the smaller Honda engines are splash lubed as is this one. I like to till real deep and with the heavy clay soil we have here the 7 HP Kohler was out of its league. The good thing is I have almost no rocks and I've been adding a good amount of compost so it's helped lighten up the soil quite a bit. I attached a few pics.

The low oil shutoff is disconnected and I'll be running synthetic oil after the engine is broken in. I need to install a cut off switch up by the handle bars just in case the old horse tries to gallop away from me.

Crazy Horse

Here's a side shot of my tiller as I have a home made strap wrench wrapped around the tire used to break loose the wheel. I have the tine shield removed to replace the tine seals. This photo is with the original 7 HP Kohler engine before I transplanted the Honda engine.

Crazy Horse

Dude11,

I'm reliving my childhood. My twin brother and I bought a Honda 50 minibike back in the late 60s with paper route money. We ran that bike almost constantly. I'd take it out in the morning and bring it back for lunch and my brother would take it in the afternoon. We had to weld the cracks in the frame several times, the result of jumping off ramps but that bike always started first kick and purred like a kitten. Sadly, we sold it when we got our drivers permit. Fond memories.

Crazy Horse

Yep, real nice job. Do you still have throttle control on the handlebars including engine shut off? Seems to be a problem with some of the replacement engines. At 13 HP you may only want to run about 1/2 - 3/4 throttle. I'm not the expert here, but I know Troy Bilt made some design changes to go from 7HP to 8HP. Ramping that puppy up to full throttle you might be needing more parts in the future. Just sayin'.

The throttle is no longer on the handlebars but on the engine. I removed the starter and added a kill switch.

I till with the engine RPM about 2800 which is where it develops max torque. The 13 HP rating is the gross power, actual net power is about 11 HP at 3600 RPM. At 2800 RPM and the 1200 ft. altitude here it's probably about 10HP but it's torque that matters in a tiller engine.

Since this engine weighs almost 20 pounds more than the Kohler I had to mod the tine spring mount a bit. I used .032 safety wire double twisted.

Crazy Horse