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

OK, my snowblower has a Tecumseh engine, so when I read this I thought it could be either BS, correct, or old news.

You can't go wrong with a Briggs and Stratton engine. Tecumseh engines are prone to throwing piston rods through the crankcase wall if the oil level drops at all. The Tecumseh speed control is not nearly as robust as the Briggs and Stratton either. Briggs & Stratton is now back in the snow blower engine business in a big way with overhead valve engines ranging from 6.5 through 13 horsepower. Given prices, contracts and market inertia it's anybody's guess how quickly they will regain market share. However if you shop around machines can be found with these engines.

Anyone with any knowledge care to comment?  Here's the link.
http://home.gwi.net/~spectrum/snowbuying.html


--SnowRemover

The person who has that website is a regular on this forum (gilsons; spectrum on old forum) and could probably expand on this. I have had experience with 4 tecumseh engines over the past 25 years, plus the one on my Ariens. They have all been worked hard (3 on tillers; one on chipper) and none ever threw a rod.

Snowremober,

Please edit your post and put in a source along with a link to the site you copied from.

Marshall wrote:
I thought I did that, could you explain further?

Thanks,
SnowRemover

My bad, it was little and I missed the link.

 Old eyes.........


I would appreciate you typing in the name of the site instead of putting "link".

Thanks

Marshall wrote:
I edited the original post.  I admit the word "link" is so small it is easily overlooked.

--SnowRemover

I had a look at the site and found a lot of interesting things. I didn't find the comment that was quoted by  SnowRemover.

I blew the Tecumseh engine on my snowblower late last winter. The situation for me was as follows:

1. Noticed problems with blower that I didn't want to deal with myself, I don't remember what;

2. Took it to a local dealer. They "fixed" it but mentioned that there was no oil in the engine and that they had put new oil in.

3. Took the machine started it up and it stopped working within 5 minutes. I couldn't even pull the starter cord. I didn't notice any external damage but didn't really look.

4. Took it back to dealer.

5. They called to say the engine was blown. I decided to pick it up and do some research on whether to get a short block or to get a new engine.

6. When I got it home I noticed a gaping hole in the side of the engine. I don't know if I missed it or if it happened at the dealer and they "fogot" to mention it. It was probably me but i had other incidents with these guys that had me wondering, nothing I can put my finger on but something had my antenna twitching.

I ended up putting a new B&S Intek Snow on the machine and so far am quite happy with the results. I also check the oil level EVERY time before I start it up.

I noticed a dead spot of grass this summer at the spot I kept the blower when it wasn't in use during the winter. I also remember seeing what I thought was some minor oil leakage. All in all I think I ignored a problem and it bit me.

How sensitive are Tecumseh engines to a low oil situation? I can't say for sure., but they sure don't like being empty :-(

Should this be over on the "Stupid OPE Tricks" thread?

nibbler wrote: Sigh

It figures, I went back to the site and behold, I found the exact quote. I got distracted by all the neat stuff there and wandered off to some of the other pages without gettting to the bottom of the one I originally went to.

Over 30 years ago Briggs for reasons that I am unaware of stopped producing engines for snow blowers. Last season they got back in the market with a vengence. Not only did they start producing OHV blower engines but they also to my understanding acquired Simplicity and Snapper. This accounts for the Briggs power on those two brands this winter.Great way to increase market share!

 It is true that Tecumseh engines blow their rods if the oil level is low or if they over rev when the governor linkage sticks. If you allow these conditions to evolve in your equiptment then suffer the consequences. I am on my second Tecumseh powered machine, the first one being sold to a close friend. Both have had no issues with the engines. I rebuilt a Tecumseh with a blown rod  that belonged to that same friend. Cause? No oil in the crankcase.

My 87 year old father cleared last weeks Long Island storm with his 1960 Briggs powered Simplicity . I don't believe that machine would still be in service if it had been run without oil or used with a sticky governor.Do you?By the way ,he doesent like Tecumseh. Why? He's a Briggs man! Why ? Cause that s' what he has! Ford vs Chevy!!!  

Take care of your stuff and it will take care of you. Abuse it and

Marc 

mml4 wrote:
And that's a fact Jack! 

Seriously, that is so so true. I have seen engines of all types and ages in my years, some old and working, some old and not working and some new and not working. It usually boils down to user maintenance to whether the engine expired or not or had all kinds of trouble.

Then you have people like me that have had a 3.5 Tecumseh and neglected the heck out of it, never changed the oil or air filter and 13-14 years later it still ran. My grandparents had an old steel decked push mower with a little Briggs on it, the engine was painted white, that's how old it was. That thing never saw maintenance and ran and ran and ran. While we see some of these things, they are certainly not the rule and I am not sure why they ran that long, just dumb luck I guess? Or, in the case of my little Tecumseh, maybe it would have seen 30 years if I had taken care of it and 13-14 years was a short life?

I am certain that if we had engineering notes to study we would find inherent problems within certain models of any brand of engine. Matter of fact I bet people like Sir Buttlint sit back and laugh at these threads because they could sit and right novels about any small engine out there and make it to where we would be leery of buying anything. 

Sometimes what we don't know is good for us.

While this has been debated and argued in the past I personally have never seen it or heard of it in person and I am surrounded by Tech engines of various ages and sizes blowing snow up here in the harsh winters we have.  I have a buddy who bought a Ariens 824 with a Tech engine from a hardware store.  He did not check the oil and ran the machine in a huge snow storm and that sucker according to him ran for about 30 minutes before kicking it.  That's impressive in my book.

When the day comes besides that that I run across a Snow King engine that has thrown a rod I will gladly post it.  Now that is my experience.  Pete has been into snowblowers much years more than me.

C

I said it before on the old board:  Like my daddy used to say "they're all good until they  break, then they're just more sh*t I have to fix".  The definition of a bad product in my mind is one that fails despite proper use and maint.  Tec engines in my experience and opinion are no more prone to failure(any failure) than any other engine.  And anyway, since when the hell was failing due to lack of oil a bad thing???  How could anyone believe that an engine wouldn't toast if run dry???  I mean WTF????

Snowremober,
There once was this couple that had returned from thier vacation and found that someone had removed all the contents from thier house....except thier toothbrushes.

buttlint wrote:

Perhaps the fruit of the grape has gone to my head...but this means, what?

the thieves don't care about dental hygiene?

the thieves didn't want toothbrushes with germs on them?

the thieves had stolen enough and could afford to buy their own toothbrush?

(Martha....where is my Advil !!!!!)

They stole none of the toothbrushes? New or used?

Monk could figure this out.

everyone in the house went about brushing in a normal manor. a few weeks later the owner of the house relized that his camera was not stolen either and the film was full. after getting the film developed he got a sick shock. a pic of some guys bent over naked with the tooth brushes stuck up there a$$es.   .

Thanks Kneebiter.

I thought there was a reasonable answer.

the moral of the story is URBAN LEGAND. the story about the toothbrushes has been around for ever always a little different and happened to somebodys cousin or sisters boyfriend . you get the picture.

It just snows to blow ya:
You cant believe everything you read on the internet.

Hahahaha, leave it to Lint to throw in some ironic symbolism.

ps I didn't get it either , then the light bulb came on upstair.

TheKneebiter wrote:
Actually this happened to my cousins sister's boyfriend.

--SnowRemover

Wouldn't your cousins sister still be your cousin?  (except in West Virginia that is, then your sister could also be your half cousin).

Walt wrote:
Or your wife!

Emmo,

Only in West Virginia!  - "The Home of the Scared Sheep State"

     The moral of the story.............

You can lead a Yak to water,

but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in the poke.

                                                                                                                                                      18 degrees

Emmo wrote:

      
      

            Only if she has all of her teeth !!!!!!!!!!!


                   Tom  

Run ANY OPE low or out of oil, regardless of the engine brand on it, and you're looking for an engine failure to occur.

Tecumseh's do have a tendency to be LESS TOLERANT to low oil conditions but they will last if you care for them.

This is a classic case of laziness/ignorance meets accountability or "saving of face". "It ain't my fault the darned thing crapped out on me - them Tekumsens are just plain JUNK!!"

Don't blame yourself, blame someone else (or blame the engine in this case).

Marty

Majorxlr8n wrote:
While I agree with the basic statement that you have to intelligently maintain you engines. There is a point of sensitivity to a problem where it is a design problem as well. I don't think the Tecumseh engines have passed that point, their requirements seem to be reasonbale. At the same time it is fair to say  that one engine design is more prone to a problem than another if it is true. I thought the origninal poster was asking for opinions on whether the staement was true.

Here's an example of what I mean:

Lets say that brand X engine only starts having problems if they are low on oil by more than 1 Litre ( close to 1 Qt ). while brand Y blows up if it is down by  30ml ( 1 oz). All other things being equal which would you like to own? Which do you think is a better design? Which is less prone to user error? which is less sensitive to a "low oil" condition?

Gee I didn't even know I was at the root of this thread!
 
I stand by my observations especially in regard to vintage engines. I had never seen a thrown rod in 6 years of working on OPE until Gilson started using some 10HP Tecumsehs and we had several fail out of a small population that same season. Those engines were very tolerant off slightly low oil conditions, this has surfaced over and over again including on the WTB board last season. If you remember Kaboom said it all, I get the same message in my email. There's no urban legend about it, it is fact. Why is this so? My two thoeries and they are only theories are that first the oil reserve is less on these engines and I suspect the lubrication system is also less effective. The other thiing we saw over and over was that the old governor linkages on the Tecumsehs were crap and had a multitude of hang-ups and failure modes including runaway RPMs.

So that's my opinion based on my own hard experience. Are todays Tecumsehs bad engines? I'm not sure, I do still hear of the low oil failures, and I don't mean running the engine dry by any means. How bad can they be? Probably not that bad after all they are still around and you see them running all the time. Fact is when you hear thrown rod you almost always hear Tecumseh in the same sentence. In other words I don't want to hear about the one you have been running for 30 years, nobody said they all blow, just more than others, it is a relative thing.

The section of my page quoted at the beginning of this page was written several years ago and is due for some updating but the message will not change. B&S is making a slow comeback. The challenge for them is overcoming Tecumseh's strong offering in 2 stroke power. After B&Ss lackluster attempt at a 2 stroke engine Tecumseh used their 2 strokes as leverage to gain 4 stroke market share. It was a shrewd business move and came right when the  compact 2 stroke machines were coming into their own, manufacturers needed 2 stoke units and Tecumeh had them.

Pete.

Add me to the list of blown Tecumseh ( thrown rod ) engines.

I've got it chalked up to probable operator error ( me). I had some problem, sent it to a local dealer. they fixed it but said there was no oil in it when it came in. Next time I used it it locked up on me. Sent it back without doing an inspection ( silly me). They come back and say the engine is blown, do I want a short block? I say no and start researching ( mostly WTB - thank you everybody :-) ).  Got the engine back and there's this big hole in the side. I've put an 11HP B&S Intek Snow  on the blower and so far have been really happy. I also check the oil every time I start up which is what i should have been doing in the first place.

Note - There was a dead spot in the grass that was under the snow where I had the blower parked so my guess is that I had a slow leak that went unnoticed. I had changed the oil in the fall and checked the level for the first several startups and then got lazy.

Final Note: Yes it was fun putting the new engine on.

The "dipper "on the connecting rod which splashes the oil around is as big as your finger nail and does not go to the bottom of the sump." down only a little oil" famous last words as you tilt back your blower to back up . opps now i have a large hole undre my starter .

millwright

Hi Nibbler,

Was it difficult trying to re-power your machine.  I don't recall if you mentioned whether your snowblower originally had an 11 HP engine on it.  If not, were there any modification to the snowblower or the drive & auger pulleys that you needed to make?  This is a great subject, I wish more members that have repowered were to post their experiences.  I'm sure many would benefit from it. 

Could it be possible Tecumseh's use oil faster, thus catching more people with low oil, thus more kabooms?

Marshall,
Briggs tells me that thier 10 hp, horizontal shaft, L-heads, (that they used on a lot  of generators) use 1 oz. of oil per hr.....That's acceptable too them.
So... say you are on a jobsite....where you run 8 hrs a day....burning 8 oz of oil is normal? I just hope you have an oil-guard switch that shuts it down every couple of hours? Cause if you didnt buy that option.....you are going too have toast for lunch  the second day it's on the jobsite.  I have seen alot of those with big ole gapping holes in the side of thier crankcases.

buttlint wrote: That's an insane amount of oil for an engine to use.  Glad I'm looking for a Honda powered generator with their 11 HP OHV engine. 

buttlint wrote: Their either scewing with you or, more likely, those engines that do run all day have no cylinder walls left and the rings are shot. Who would knowingly continue to use an engine in that shape, besides the government? LMAO

Would this mean that my recycled tec, some parts came from the auto-recycling center
(still love that phrase) will throw a rod in the middle of a dark and stormy night,
(sounds like the start of a novel) snow blowing 2' of snow, so I can get out and get to work.
I keep the oil,(synthetic and a little sea foam) right at the full mark.
Will I have to stop every 1/2 hr. to check the oil?
  WHEN AND IF IT BLOWS IT GOES!!!(right back to the auto-recycling center HA HA)
BUT it will have another tec on it!!
Old iron is good iron!
T.J. terry
 

Recently my Husqvarna Blower went into a high rpm fit seconds after starting.  I had walked away to let it "warm up".

It threw a rod as I was running back to it to shut it down,  This took like 5 seconds.

Not the best idea this day.  It was a tecumseh snow king, 10.5 HP with only about 12 hours on it.  I take care of my stuff like a paranoid mechanic.

It was not low on oil, and had been changed about 2 1/2 run time hours before this happened.  of course it was just outside of warranty.

I just bought another blower with a briggs and stratton engine to get away from this nightmare.  In my lifetime I have never had any of my equipment throw a rod.

Now I have a $1200 boat anchor, and a shiny new Snapper.  Snowing today,  cannot wait to run the new machine.

Maybe I can fit a briggs motor on the Husky?

Jim

I've run two Tecumseh ten horse power L head engines for a total of twenty years and never had a problem with them.  They're not the most  sophisticated engine in the world but they get the job done.  No comparison with the Briggs OHV engines.  Nowhere near as smooth and quiet.  The B&S seems to be quite a bit more powerful for the same rating as well.  

Here's an engine I've rebuilt for my Yamaha RD400.  It's only partially re-assembled.  Carbs & intake system will be taken off before I put it back in the bike.  This motor weighs around 45 to 50 lbs. and should put out around 55 h.p. when all is done.   Put this on your Husqvarna!