Norm,
I had thought about the potential for the fuel tank to be an issue, and adapting throttle and choke cables, electricals etc. Made the idea of the new old 17hp Greenie that little bit more enticing. Hopefully it will be nice to me.
I'll post a few photos of my old Greenie for the record in my next post, just in case it helps anyone unravel a mystery. Do we have a better place to put those sort of photos or should I just post them here?
Incredible that Loctite might be good enough for BMW. I suppose I would be asking for a glue that also filled a bit, given the fact that the shaft is no longer even snug. Nevertheless it would be interesting to see what would happen. My guess is it would work for about a minute. I like the idea of the experiment, though. The problem is, if it worked, wouldn't I feel foolish if I hadn't replaced the thrust washer and the case gasket and and and......
I'd be interested to know what sort of hours can be got out of ride-on sized Briggs motors. Mine had 650 odd hours on it, and as far as I know it was without problem or significant signs of wear. It didn't use oil, ran powerfully and smoothly right up till just before the governor killed it (Well, there was about an hour of rough running because of the carbie o-ring having gone and the motor running extremely rich, and a bit hot). If that was a car motor, I reckon that would be equivalent to about 40,000kms (?). I know someone who bought a new Holden ute and didn't get it serviced (no oil changes at all) for about 60,000kms. He then drove it up to about 150,000 and it was absolutely fine.
Anyone heard of a 20hp Intek motor with thousands of hours on the clock?
As AVB alluded to earlier, maybe overheating caused the governor failure, so I should reiterate that there was a short period (say three half hour sessions) of time that the motor ran very rich due to carbie problem immediately before I fixed it and started up the motor. Failure was at the very instant of starting, unless it happened as I turned it off before carbie repair. Seems a bit too coincidental, I would have thought. Then again, the starter motor decided to fall apart at pretty much the same time. I had thought that they all might have been linked had mine had a decompression device for start up. As said before and confirmed by AVB, similar motors were fitted with these devices, they were known to break, sometimes taking out the governor. That would have made start up more stressful for the starter, potentially precipitating its failure shortly after. But that wasn't the case. AVB has never seen failure like this. Awesome. I'm an exceptional failure.
