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

My brand new Toro 1028 OXE. I noticed a open end of a pipe. on the right side its open and the left side its closed take a look on the picture

and here its closed

does it belong like that?

niper99 wrote:

Well they drilled and tapped both sides of my engine and they only use that engine on the 1028 model or only did. My guess is Toro has been slowly changing their specs over time. Now of course they are using a completely redesigned engine not a Briggs & Stratton engine. So it will probably be more specific to certain Toro models.

Whats the purpose of the hole all together?? for adding oil, they can't put in oil via the dip stick?

JoelKlein wrote:

My guess is that tipping a 250 lb. snowblower upside down to get the oil out would tend to be problematic. The drain hole just requires tipping it a bit. Very easy to add the oild at the top tho.

JoelKlein wrote:
You can grossly overfill with oil using the dipstick hole.  And when you overfill, you have to suck out the excess through the same hole, or open up the drain plug.

It's just one of those "poka yoke" technique.  Idiot proofing, mistake proofing.  Most Honda small engines have this, you cannot overfill very much, excess oil will just spill out the hole.

Steve_Cebu wrote:
My guess its more of a cost reduction.  One less hole to drill and tap.  One less plastic cap.  US Design engineers like to built in these extras into the product in keep the cost reduction engineers busy.      Their bonus is tied to the cost reduction $.

Honda engineers gives you both drilled/tapped hole and a cap.  They figured it was a lot more simple to deal with one less part number for inventory maintenance and documentation overheads from the get go.  Thus saving money. 

Everybody is reducing costs in different ways. 

aa335 wrote:

Well I'm glad I have the option of both oil drain holes.

Actually those are not drain holes those are fill holes.    The drain holes have a plug in them with a square head.  Located lower down just behind the fill plug.
You can see one in the second photo just above the arrow.

Steve_Cebu wrote:
You may have to turn your snowblower upside down to fill them then. 

not briggs, nor toro declared any were in the documentation what does caps are... Im going to call up briggs tomorrow and ask them... mean while take a look at these great clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkabArjCQU

JoelKlein wrote:
I wouldn't worry about it.  The cap cannot be put in the wrong hole.   The other blind hole has no threads and the cap will not fit or screw into.

Funny video, good ole country fun.