Stopped by HD this evening and found they had sold off most of their Ariens machines and now had many MTD's. The engines are unmarked and there's nothing identifying the engine in the machine manual. After poking around I finally found a small Made in China sticker under the cowling. All the machines had these OHV's on them. For any big and established Chinese maker MTD would be sweet contract so the engines are probably pretty good.
I put a Harbor Freight Central Machinery engine on an older Ariens body. It was a 6.6hp OHV Honda design and a sweet engine. The body was nice with a tight tractor section. It only required a light mod to run another chute crank under the wider OHV. I sold it to a person in the next town so I'll be able to keep track of it over the years. We'll see how it stands up.
With Tecumseh stopping production it’s very likely Ariens will opt for Chinese OHV’s very soon. I know many will yank out the Chinese goods but we all did that about Japanese goods not long ago. I now drive a great Honda and love it – 35mpg 5 speed around town, 40+ on a trip. The Chinese are hungry like we used to be in the 50’s and are capable of producing decent goods. It will be interesting to see where Ariens goes. They have a big reputation to protect and if they go Chinese it will be a big feather for the Chinese makers.
Trouts2
