Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

I was surprised to see that there are several different clones (presumably Chines) of the Honda GX200. Oddly, some seem to sell for about the same price as price as a replacement Honda, although others are much less - about half. The various folks selling them claim parts are interchangable with the Honda.

Are these any good? I don' think "You get what you pay or" has been suspended, but  China does have very low labor rates and we are talking small engines, not satellites. The one owner I talked to bought one for a generator - $160 delivered - and he said it started on the second pull and seems to perform fine. 

while visiting the neighbors, he showed me a generator that he purchased....................

no stickers anywhere on the engine....................

he says the guy selling them said it was a 13 hp honda......................

dont know what it really is but its really quiet and starts on the first pull......................

might be clones out there............wouldnt be the first time...........

bill

I see on the Honda Canada website they have a small notice about counterfeit products. The engines look identical with the same paint scheme, but without the logo or stickers, which I'm sure would result in a SWAT team of lawyers armed to the teeth with lawsuits parachute on them so fast they wouldn't know what hit them.

I don't know how a knock-off can be the same as the original unless they can get the identical parts from where Honda gets or manufactures them. You can get a lot of parts that are similiar, but doesn't mean they meet the original design specifications of the maker.

Why are they doing this? Obviously to cash in on the Honda reputation and make money. People think as it looks the same it is likely the same, but just isn't branded. But try to take it back to a Honda dealer for warranty work and watch him ROFL his AO.

It would be interesting to endurance run those engines to see how they do.

China doesn't have much in the way of copyright or consumer protections laws, I presume.

Anyone want to buy a Rolex watch at a fraction of the cost, but with a slight imperfection in spelling: "Rollhex" Those typos save you a lot of money.

Maybe they're a Hondo Highwind. LOL

Marshall wrote:

LOL Marshall,

Or "Hondha", "Hawnda", or the Vietnamese version "HoChiMinhda" .

i went down to check it out after reading this post ...........

it says Kenowa tools on the tank and theres a small sticker on the recoil housing that says GS188 OHV...........

this generator runs great also has key start.........................

when i asked him what it cost he said it was marked down from $999 to $750.................

he waited till they were packing up and got it for $700................

hope its worth it........

bill

Here in our area they are called Lifan engines.  We sell them.  Sure enough all the parts are interchangable.  The starnge thing is we are a dealer for these and the Honda.

If Honda really and truly has no part in these engines, how come we get parts labeled made in China?  Having said that, a coil that retails over a $100 Canadian for a Honda, retails at $15 Canadian for a Lifan.

It does seem rather odd.  Some have said it was Hondas way of getting into the cheaper bracket, some have said that some company has bought the old molds from Honda.  Either way the knock offs are selling here for half or less then what a Honda does.

The generators here aren't "legal" because of safety reasons, so that maybe a good thing to check out in your area as well.  They have not safety badging on them.  Here they come in a variety of colors, red, orange, black, you get the point.

They run as well as the Honda, but as of yet they don't have any emission standards.

That's about what I know of them off the top of my head.

Sherri

Highwind wrote:
It is very unlikely that you are using an IBM PC? I worked for an American company that cloned the IBM "Winchester" hard drive and later tried to reverse engineer a Savin copier (which was made by Ricoh). Any area that had patent protection was designed around  so they weren't infringed upon. AMD makes chips compatible with the Intel instruction set but without using  the Intel design.

I'm not sure how much, if any, of a Honda GX200 is patented or otherwise protected by intillectual property rights. If there aren't any, and they don't claim it to be a Honda, they're probably free and clear.

Reverse-engneering of parts is relatively straightforwrd. The parts are put into an X-Y-Z coordinate measuring machine and the critical dimensions captured. Then 3D CAD models are constructed and prototypes are made and tested. Once everything works, production can begin. It is very common for manufacturers to design in extra features with no purpose just to determine if a product has been cloned.

I was curious because the GX200 seems to have as much as 3 ft lbs of torque more than  other  mid-frame engines. But t's for a snowblower application, and no no seems to have a handle on  what needs to be done to a GX200 for such use.

A box of the same parts are not an engine.

And the parts being designed the same on CAD don't necessarily have the same properties of material.

I'm curious, are these  clone engines as quiet running as a Honda?  If so, that would be enough for me to try one out if I needed to replace a Tecumseh engine on a piece of power equipment.