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

My Yamaha snowblower will vibrate a little at low throttle.   Its not an issue for me but the choke arm on the carburetor vibrates and rattles all around. I'd like to remedy this. I picked up a metal punch (really small) some JB weld a scotchbright pad , some contact cleaner,  and now I'm ready to go.  What is my next step?

Have to agree with Friiy's choices.  I've been a convert to Echo equipment for a while now.  Started with my two stroke 4.5 h.p., 140cc Echo self propelled lawn mower.  I've had it almost twenty years.  It cut half an acre of grass twice a week for twelve years and never missed a beat.  I have since moved up to a Kawasaki powered Husqvarna lawn tractor but still use the Echo for trimming up the yard and in hard to get to places.  All I have ever done to it is add fuel, lube the drive wheel gears & sharpen the blade.  It's still on it's original drive belt & spark plug!  Starts second pull every time, is easy on fuel and still make plenty of power.  Since it's purchase, I've bought an Echo leaf blower, Echo weed eater & Echo chainsaw.   I have experience/ownership of Stihl, Jonsereds & Honda OPE.  Echo is as good as the best of their offerings for considerably less money.  Most certainly a very good value.    

Kawasaki 2 stokes and Echo. I never would have guessed that these would have made the list. When I see a 2-stroke I always think it's not built for extended use. These seem to defy that assumption.  I grew up with a lawn boy mower that was a 2 stoke from the 70's. I remember the blue cloud that followed me across the yard..  My brother and I used it after school to mow lawns.  He did not believe in adding oil to the fuel ("that was optional and cut into profits") .  Are the Echo products available today still made to a high standard?

  

I think Echo is one of the few OPE manufacturers that might have improved.  Not so much in durability.  I doubt there was ever an issue with that.  Technologically they've made some very good advancement is cleaning up exhaust emissions, reducing engine noise& vibration and overall excellent fuel economy.  In the last year and a half I've purchased a leaf blow, a weed eater and a small chain saw, all Echo products.  I have nothing but praise for all of them.   Not saying that Stihl, Jonsereds, Husqvarnara etc. are not good products.  They are.  It's the combination of top notch product quality at very reasonable prices that make Echo so attractive. 

By the way, a well maintained two stroke will provide many years of reliable service.  I'm working on a 34 year old Yamaha RD350 right now.  As old as it is, it's more than capable of lasting another 34 years...if well maintained. 

borat wrote:
I cut my teeth on a Yamaha R5, much the same as yours except 5 speeds and a drum brake up front.
That was 30 years or so ago.  I bought it second hand then rebuilt everything and made it look as much
as I could like a TZ350.  I went everywhere with that bike.  One night at a party I let a guy take it for a ride
and he smashed it up.  That was the end of my motorcycling days.  I was kind of glad in a way since I
was beginning to see that I was living somewhat dangerously zipping around on that little roadster.

Paul

An R5?  Alright!  I have a '72 Mandarin Orange R5 out in the shed waiting it's turn for restoration.  Wild little hotrods those old things were.  I restored/hopped up an RD400 earlier this hear.  Lots of go fast goodies in it and virtually every possible wear item replaced.  I had a bit of a learning curve getting it tuned correctly with the modified air intake system, modified carbs and expansion chambers as well as setting the the best programable electronic igniton curve.  Once I had everything dialed in, I was startled how quick this little thing is.   Tuning session require testing sessions.  After the last adjustments, I took it out to a lonely stretch of highway and stopped.  I launched the bike and from second gear up, I rung the engine out to 9500 rpm each time before shifting.   I swear that in less than 15 seconds it was doing 100 mph.  I was still in fourth gear!   That was enough for me.  I cut the throttle and thought about what I'd just done and said to myself, "Getting caught at these speeds, I'll be going to jail."   I didn't quite expect that kind of speed from an old  1976, 400cc bike.  Here's a pic of the 400 & engine:

friiy wrote: OK, I have searched the net for Kawasaki TD-24 and TF-22 engines.  I'm coming up empty.  Can someone throw me a bone.  What ope did these run on?

borat wrote:
I loved the sound of my bike once I put those expansion chambers on.  I moved the footpegs back,
had clip-on handlebars, single seat.  At the time I was the only one on the road with a racing fairing,
now they've all got them.  The people in the shop where I worked thought I was weird.  We sold
Honda and Ski-doo/Canam, so I was a bit of a traitor.

Programmable ignition curve ?  Never heard of such a thing.  I remember playing with jets and
needles and then setting the timing so it wouldn't knock, that was about it. 

I went to the motorcycle mechanics school in Daytona Beach back in '77.  That was a blast.  One
of the teachers was into hot-rodding 50cc mopeds.  He had one that would do 70mph.

Paul

I replaced the points/condenser/coil with a state of the art MZ-B/Zeeltronic electronic charging & ignition system.  The Zeeltronic CDI is programmable.  It comes with a hand held programmer that plugs into the CDI.  I can program the advance of the ignition curve with up to ten stages of advance.  For instance, low rpm requires more advance to develop torque so I'll set the programmer at 24.5 degrees of advance at 1500 rpm, 23 degrees at 3000,  21 degrees at 4500,  19 degrees at 5000 etc... down to 16.5 degrees at 9000 rpm.  The real benefit of programmable ignition is that the heat developed by the engine can be transferred from the cylinders/heads into the pipes.   That contribute to two positive results.  It reduces heat in the engine and increases heat in the pipe.  Both of those factors are very important for reducing engine wear and increasing power.  Reducing engine heat is pretty much a known factor to prolong engine life.   Increasing the temperature of the gases flowing through the pipes increases gas velocity which in turn assist the engine to breath better thus make more power.  From my experience, it works.  Power is very strong for an old 400cc engine and after a long hard highway run, I can put my hand on the engine heads without burning my fingers.   New tricks for an old dog.  

  

 

The Kawasaki engines I was talking about were on a lot of diffrent equip.   Astron, Kazz, TMC, even the old Homelite commerical trimmers..

I found one picture of a TF22 engine on a Hedge trimmer,  I don't know what brand... Alot of people at the time thought that Kawasaki made the equipment..  but they were just a supplier of engines..

 

This you could get this engine for a few diffrent applications,  They sold it with a fuel tank fill pointing the cap whatever you needed it depending on the mount...this engine was about $280 bucks by its self...  The hedge trimmer sold for about $330 in 94-95..

I think this is a Astron from the sticker on the top,  The Td24 engine was a 24 cc model.  It had diffrent coloring and shape..

Friiy