On one hand, they look like they have got what was coming to them - snapping up mower manufacturers and running names into the ground along pumping out hundreds of thousands of OHV shockers
On the other, it is sad that after over 100 years of history, they are losing out to the Chinese.
Lots of poor business decisions
Apparently, they are in the process of trying to flog off the australian rights to echo/shindaiwa after only a few months of getting the warehousing right.
Will mow with a L-head Briggs tomorrow as a sign of respect
Hi Tyler, Looks like my pile of Victa 2 strokes have just gone up in value A lot of the problems for Briggs is the fact that instead of deciding to actually build a quality motor (as Honda do) they decided to enter the race to the bottom building cheap rubbish but still trading on the Briggs name that people knew and trusted. Building a quality motor takes time for the word to get out but they should have been in for the long haul, but instead they decided to try going head to head with the Chinese junk and this is always a road to disaster
I believe a few of their motors are alright (the higher the number, the better generally) but if I were in the market, I would sooner buy a kwaka or Honda and not take the chance.
With what Briggs did to Victa, they had it coming.
The number of those OHV's I now have seen which either spit oil out of the breather, or smoke like a chimney after only a few uses is mind boggling. 1 guy got a single mow out of his.
The L heads were at least hard to kill - if not smooth or powerful
Tyler, I have to agree the L heads weren't that bad, just had bad rep for breaking conrods, but a lot of that can be attributed to the lack of maintenance but the operator not checking/changing the oil. The advantage of the 2 stroke is if the operator neglects the oil they find out very quickly. What Briggs did to Victa was not all their fault, the 2 stroke was doomed before they took it over. If Briggs folds that will divide the mower market into cheap Chinese junk and the expensive end of the market
Hi Tyler and NormK , vertical pull Briggs will go up too. No more of this:
The trouble is the new mower market is divided between stupid or ignorant buyers and commercial mowing contractors. As a result, Briggs are among the Chinese junk now. Just catering to their market. Nothing embodies this more than their no oil change required range of motors. I think Briggs overstepped here going against a fundamental principle of running a petrol motor.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
I pulled out the most easily accessible L head - 2011 on a Masport lawn marshall. Now granted, I left it with a 1/8 of a tank of 98 ron 6 months ago, but I filled with fresh 3 weeks ago and ran 5 minutes unloaded.
Check oil, fired up first pull, warmed up 40 seconds, put throttle to half and started. Got one strip and it started staggering, then surged and died.
Tried again, same problem. Didn't feel line stripping a pulsaprime at 5pm with a lawn still to do, so dragged out the old 1993 Quantum 35. 3 pulls and off it went (3 months sitting)
If I had grabbed the FC commando out, first or second pull and no hassle (except for the thorougher after mow deck cleaning)
Victa was destroyed under its previous owners GWA who also owned Rover and destroyed them. This seems to be a common MBA approach to doing business.
As to Briggs the seeds of their destruction was sown by not seeing Honda as their competitor back in the late 70's/80's and being late to the iron bore OHV party they seen Techumsech as their competitors for far too long. Their response of course, was to buy in designs manufactured from either Tomatsu (The 2 stroke), Diahatsu in the case of the Vanguard twins or Mitsubishi in the case of the smaller Vanguards. The 4hp OHV I have on my SB and the 6hp I have on a chipper I am sure are Mitsubishi designs made in China.
Are the OHV Briggs used on Chinese mowers a Briggs design or a Mitsubishi design made under license in China.
Last edited by GregR; 10/09/2010:25 AM. Reason: typo
