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Husqvarna YTH24K48 power loss and gas leak

4585 Views 13 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  davidfite1978, 
D
My Husqy is 2 years old, about 185 hours. For the past couple months the power and speed has been cut almost in half. I can also smell gas big time when mowing. I've been slowly checking off everything I can to isolate the problem and think I finally found it, but I don't have enough skill to know what exactly it means and how to fix it.

Things I did:
new oil
new oil filter
new fuel filter
fresh gas
new blades
sharpened blades
greased zerks
checked for obvious leaks

None of those things had any effect.

This week I started tearing stuff apart. Finally found the culprit. The left side exhaust has gas leaking into it somehow. I took the muffler off and the left side is wet on the inside from gas, and the right side is dry as a bone. There was gas/crud built up where the exhaust bolts to the motor (cylinder?). I don't see anything leaking from above that area. I took the exhaust completely off and mowed a bit, and then looked up in the exhaust port and it looked wet like gas was coming down from inside the motor.

Any ideas??

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P
Looks and sounds like you lost spark in that cylinder.
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D
So what do you think that means? As simple as a new spark plug will fix it? Or something worse wrong? Thanks for the help.
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D
The spark plug was fouled. changed both. No help. I noticed with the throttle all the way forward I still had some room to go if I pushed the throttle assembly by hand. I adjusted the screw that pushes the throttle so it hits it sooner and it made the mower run a little faster. Not perfect but seems to be at least better than it was. Anyone have any ideas what's going on? Not been many replies ....
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P
You need to see if the ignition is firing on that cylinder.
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D
How do I do that?
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S
Remove both spark plug wires and spark plugs. Then take the side that's in question and install plug wire onto the spark plug. You'll need to ground the spark plug against the engine but not near the spark plug hole and any fumes and or gas. Just use common sense on this part "spark + a flammable source = bad day". Then take and turn the key to start and watch for a spark from the plug. Should only take a few seconds or so to determine if it's working or not. Good luck :fing32:
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D
Thanks for the response. I'll give that a shot tonight and see what happens.
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D
Looks like good spark to the plug. Look at the picture - these are brand new plugs. The dirty one is on the problem side. Only 2 hours of use. Oh, and if I pull the bad side plug wire it does not kill or change the engine sound. Like its only running on the one cylinder all the time.

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Olds455
With the spark plugs still out, turn the flywheel by hand through a couple of cycles while holding your thumb over the plug hole (make sure ignition is off). If you don't feel pressure during the compression cycle, you got a problem. With that much fuel in the exhaust, I wonder if you don't have an exhaust valve stuck open or broken.
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D
Didn't get a chance to do that last night, but did call my local shop to see what they say. He said it could be something simple like a rocker arm got out of place or something like that? And that's an easy fix, or of course it could be something catastrophic.

Going to try that test you suggested tonight.
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D
Took my mower to the shop. They determined bad spark plugs. They said you HAVE to use factory plugs. I used whatever lowes recommended as a replacement since they didn't have factory plugs.

Worked fine for 1 hour, then back to the same problem.

Any ideas what that means?

Gonna try again tomorrow and see if it works when it's cold and then craps out as it gets hot, or if it's completely crapped out again.
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K
It's a two cylinder motor; you have to be experiencing misfire just by the sound alone.
Maybe the plug wire has rubbed through to ground, inside the engine air cover.
Once it happens and fouls the plug, the plug may not clean off.
Once stopped long enough, then plug dries off and spark is present again it just happens all over again.
When this sort of thing happens in a car or truck, the cats can overheat and melt from burning the raw gas out of a cylinder. Then the repair bill becomes quite expensive on top of the original problem..
Good luck.
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D
Thanks for the info. I called my shop and he said to bring it back in and he can hopefully get any parts covered under warranty since I brought it in for the problem originally before my warranty ended.

I did a test just now.

Started it up, pulled the plug wire off the bad side from before, and nothing happens. Still runs like "normal", which I'm assuming means it's back to running on 1 cylinder. Pull the plug wire off the good side and all of a sudden it starts spitting and sputtering and just barely stays running, AND, the plug wire on that side shocks the **** out of me. So definitely something going on with the coil and/or wires or something in that area.
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