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

I have a Techumseh HMSK80 and am thinking of replacing it with a Subaru SK30 engine. Has anyone used this engine on a snowblower before? It puts out 9.5 hp and revs to 4000 . Is it a quality engine. I was thinking of something different , and better performance than a Techumseh HMSK80. I cant find a NEW  10 ,11 or13 hp Techumseh HMSK engine.I here Honda clones have to many problems. I was told Briggs & Stratton Vibrate more than Techumseh. A REAL Honda GX340 is outstanding but cost is very high. That leads me back to subaru. I want to here from folks that  are using them. I want to repower my  serial #924108 Ariens Snowblower

I have a Toro 3521 blower I put a Harbor Freight Greyhound/Lifan 6.5 HP GX200 clone on back in January and it worked great for the 3 months I used it.  The original 3.5 Tecumseh seemed a little underpowered and never ran quite right.  Only used it a couple times though as that was my first time using that snowblower.  Was leaking oil and pretty much emptied itself after only a half a tank of gas and I didn't want to deal with it anymore so for $100 I figured I did not have much to lose with the clone.  I left the air filter on and didn't put any extra covers over it and nothing froze up on me.

The 6.5 has a lot of info from go kart racers, but was only able to find a couple reports of using them on snowblowers.

I picked up an Ariens 924xxx from sometime between 74 and 79 this spring and I was considering tossing either the 11 or 13 HP clones on it and running a slightly bigger pulley on it and see how that works for this year.  Not sure on the exact year as someone was a little over zealous with the spray paint and covered all the labels.  I tried scraping some of it off, but I must have scratched the serial numbers off, because all I can read off them is the Ariens logo and the made in Brillion Wisconsin.  The place the numbers should be is blank.  It is one of the nice large frame ones with differential, white handlerbars, full teardrop 24" bucket, and the 1-5+R and auger engagement handles on the top.  I think i was thinking it was a 79 but don't remember what my research led to now.  It had an H70 on it with a damaged crankshaft and right now has an H60 so I might just leave it and see how it works.

bus708 wrote:
Not sure where you're getting your information but some of it seems a little inaccurate.  From my experience B&S snow engines do not vibrate more than a Tecumseh engine.  I have an 11 h.p B&S snow engine on my Simplicity snow thrower.  I've used it for three seasons and in some very heavy snow conditions.  The engine performs flawlessly.  It makes much more power than the 10 h.p. Tecumseh's I've owned and actually runs quieter and smoother. 

My limited exposure to Chinese clones has been with good results.   Do a bit of research and you'll see that there are a number of very good Chinese small engine manufacturers.  The brand mentioned above and Champion are two well established manufacturers that make consistently good products. 

There's nothing wrong with Subaru/Robins engines.  They're an excellent product.  Just make sure you check the bolt pattern to mount the engine and ensure that the shaft fits the pulley{s) and that pulleys have the correct height/clearances to fit the machine.  

Check out Small Engine Warehouse if you want to look for a suitable small engine.  They have tons to select from.  

He's referring to the OH358SA 13hp. It has a balance shaft to cancel 2nd order vibration (the only snow engine to do so to date). This engine is also equipped with light piston technology (as were the large L-heads the last year or two of production). This engine vibrates a good deal less than the equivalent 342cc Briggs. Very smooth. For the rest of Tecumseh's engines, the opposite is true. They vibrate in magnitude about twice as much as the equivalent Briggs.

I doubt you can get the Subaru as an after-market engine (only Ariens uses them) and they certainly will be expensive. It is a commercial engine built with full automation in Japan (even the GX is made in Taiwan).

Borat had the right idea. Small Engine Warehouse has several engines that will work for you. There is only one with the truly correct crankshaft extension (Tecumseh #3, 1" diameter).  It's a Tecumseh 11hp OHV Snow King. I myself would get the HMSK100 (re:358cc L-head) with the adaptor for the 3/4" crankshaft (displacement is your friend). The output on these is rather beastly.