OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Engines Questions On Victa Two Stroke Engines Straight fueled Victa 160

Hi folks.

The old Victa I bought on Friday is cactus. In a haste to buy something by this coming Friday I certainly got done.

Not having touched a two stroke since I mowed the lawn for dad back in the 80's I wasn't sure as to how much compression they had by simply pulling the starter. A quick call to my brother revealed it was soft by a long shot.

I have pulled the engine down and am wondering as to how you would assess the damage to the rest of the internals if it indeed was straight fueled?

The piston is badly scored and the area of the cylinder around the exhaust port is scored as well.

There appears to be the absolute slightest amount of play in the big end. Whether or not it is sideways movement I can't really work out because it is so slight.

Is there a method you fellas use to ascertain play in the big end?

If the barrel is damaged do you just throw it away?

Get some wet-dry paper. 600 grit spray it with CRC. Or use a hone. Keep the CRC up to it.
Rub the worst of the scuffing off the bore and the piston.
Clean the ring groves out on the piston with a small screwdriver. The grooves will be full of carbon.

Take care not to wash too much grit etc into the crank bearing or up in the small end of the conrod.

Wipe the motor out with a clean white rag and warm soapy water. Not that it really matters that much. The soapy water that is, if its scored up any grit thats left over will hardly hurt.


Go to the mower shop, buy a new set of rings, head gasket, pull starter O-ring and both inlet o-rings and a stop pin rubber. The whole lot should be well under $50. (and carb stuff if you need it, primer face and O-ring and needle, another $20-25) Put it back together and i bet it runs a treat. They are not a low tolerance technological break through. They will slap and rattle away, they dont need heaps of compression, a few scuff marks wont hurt.

Slop a bit of 2T oil about in the crankcase (into the crank and big end bearings) and in the cylinder when its going back together. Say about half a cap full or a bit less, most of it in the crank case. It will smoke like no other when you start it.

Heres a tip, put the bottom ring on, then put it in the cylinder, then once thats in the cyl, put the top ring on and push the piston in. That will save your fingers. Doing both at once, when the bottom ring gives your fingers that were holding the ring into the pistong groove get jambed between the top of the cyl and the top ring and it draws blood and in nasty spots on the tips of your fingers. Rings are sharp.

Biggest hassle is the conrod pin/bolt. If you can get that undone and do it back up with the same method you are a-rockin. I did one with a pin punch years ago. It lived out in the weather for 8 years that mower. Got a bit hard to start, i thought it was going to have to go to heaven, thats why i bought some mowers and started fixing a few to fund a free rebuild on mine. All i had to do was clean the carb out it ran like a treat and started first pull, then i sold it.


Play in the big end??? when the roller pins fall out of the bearing its probably got too much play. its got to have play for when it warms up so it has room to expand.
What i would check is the play in the bottom bearing in the crankcase. Grab the blade disc and see if it has any movement.



Before anyone goes telling me im a rough bugger, i know i am. Ive got a few Cyls out in the shed that look like the one i did years back that i mentioned above and probably aldots too. It works, it will mow and do the job. Ive got a selection of better cyls here so i have no need to do that. If you have only got the one, then thats all youve got.


Cheers, Bob.

You can get it bored.

Theres a guy doing change over PT cyls, rebored with new piston etc on eBay for $70.

Its cheaper to go buy another mower.


Bob.

Hi Rbob, thanks for your detailed reply.

I stripped it down yesty arvy and it wasn't pretty. A section of the top ring is completely stuck.

There doesn't seem to be any play in the crank bearing, just a smidgen in the big end.

Here are some pics of the piston and barrel,





The guy said it wasn't working due to carb issues but he could have admitted he straight fuelled it.

It certainly looks as if it was run on straight petrol. If you hone (or more likely bore) the scores out of that cylinder bore you'll need a bigger piston. The piston you've got is scrap, but taking piston and cylinder from a scrapped mower seems like it should be much cheaper than $70 (if you live in a town or city, probably $70 cheaper).

I'm not happy with some parts of Bob's cure. I don't like grit in the engine, because it's a recipe for rapid wear. One question is whether there are metal particles in the big end bearing: you need to get that clean. Another of Bob's methods I don't support is trying to clean out piston ring grooves with a screwdriver. I've been there and done that, and the result was ring groove lands that were no longer square to the bore. I use - and recommend - a piece of one of the old piston rings. Break off a piece about a third to half of the circumference of the bore, so you have something to hold onto, and carefully grind the end square to the ring. Use it carefully as a scraper. With four stroke pistons, which don't have pegs in the ring grooves, my favourite method is to hold the piston in a lathe chuck and use the piece of piston ring as a hand-held parting tool. (Pack the piston so the chuck jaws don't touch it, of course, and use a negligible clamping pressure, or make a simple adaptor that holds the piston via a pin through the gudgeon pin hole.) If you have a lathe an even better method is to make a suitable parting tool and use that, but I've never bothered. Whatever method you use, do not remove any metal from the ring groove of course: not even a tiny amount.

Other than that, just doing a mix-and-match of parts from a wrecked mower seems like a cheap, easy fix. You even end up with a full set of parts to draw on, so whenever you find a worn bit, you just take the better one from the other mower and avoid both a trip to the mower shop, and any expense. There is one point I agree with Bob on: this isn't a Briggs and Stratton, let alone a car or motorcycle engine: it's a Victa 2 stroke, so it does not require the detail and care in fitting parts that you would apply to a "real" engine.

Honestly i get what Grumpy says but i say thats nothing that could not be sorted and slapped back together.

Grumpy is right, it will be a bit dodgy and screwdrivers in the ring grooves and grit in the engine will not see it live a long and happy life, but id put money on a good 5 years faithful service. Sure its knocked 20 years off but theres plenty of them.

Obviously theres a right way, and then theres the economical budget concious bodge it up way.
If that was my mower and i did not have the funds it woud go together exactly as i said above. Or another mower (donor motor) is $20 away and it could just need the carb cleaned out.






New crank bearings are $16 a pair from the place up the road. I can get you the part numbers if you want. A seller on eBay is selling the cheapest piston and rings sets ive seen for Victas. You could buy the rest of the O-rings head gasket etc out of the sore on the site here.


Cheers, Bob.

Hi Bob, there is always 2 ways of doing things. Doing it once and doing it right...or, doing a bodgey job.
Our moderators here try to give the correct advice using good workshop practice, so that a successful repair or restoration will be completed as an end result.

It all depends on what the member is trying to achieve.....a successful repair, or one that is cheap and give heaps of trouble.
In my own opinion, I would re-bore that barrel and fit an new oversize piston and rings....failing that, I'd scrap it.
But that's me!

Thanks fellas. I need a reliable mower to mow customer lawns with (part time business to help pay for my engines etc) The customer with the steep block wants it done this week so I need this two stroke to manage the smallish steep area.

They are good customers who don't chop and change looking for a cheaper quote each few months.

In the end I bought another second hand smoker. No disrespect but I'm not a big fan of these. I love my Briggs.

New decomp valve and this one should be a runner.

aldot, there are quite a lot of bits on the seized one that can become useful spares so you can be fairly sure you will always have a steep-slope mower that is either running already, or can be repaired in a flash. I don't like 2-strokes either, but I think they can have their place - which to me is doing small, awkward, possibly semi-destructive jobs that need a lightweight mower. By the time you put a grass-catcher on a 2-stroke, you've lost the plot.

Well I tapped the starter holes that hold the top cover on and bought some suitable stainless bolts, purchased a new decomp valve and threw it all together. I pilfered the top cover and fuel tank off of the bung mower I bought as I prefer the larger fuel cap orifice of the older tank, plus the fuel cap has the fuel/oil ratio stamped on the cap should the sticker ever peel off.

I noticed it was a bit smokey when the seller fired it up for me so I mixed up some fresh fuel with the Shindaiwa 2 stroke oil I exclusively use. It fired up first pull and I was away. After the smoke cleared and with my ears buzzing I mowed a small patch and decided it passed it's first test. I'm in business.

aldot, if you use the correct oil to fuel ratio and a decent spark plug, it shouldn't smoke once it burns the carbon out of the muffler. There is a guy lives near me who runs an old Victa wreathed in blue smoke - it must be 16:1 or worse. He's happy, and he gets the lawn mowed - but whoever inherits that old mower from him will have a horribly carboned up exhaust port and muffler.

The muffler off the dunger is as clean and dry as can be! I guess the straight fuelling had something to do with that. After I finish this job I will pull the muffler and check the exhaust port.

It did stop smoking after about 20 seconds.

I will see next time how it starts now that the new fuel and oil is through the system. The old mix would still have been in the carby this arvy.

Hi Aldot, on a great looking machine. I see that you've bought the new decomp valve, and the machine is now up and running. I presume that this is the same valve as discussed in the "Victa Decomp Valve" thread, so I will now close that thread.
Best wishes,

All mowers should be Victa 2 strokes.

Fair enough you want the forum to be here to give the right good advice. But i do not see that it was Bad advice.

I have stripped down a victa and it looked the same as that. Out of necessity it got new rings and little else and some time on the piston and i think i might have used a hone on the bore. 8 years later that mower was still going strong. Not bad considering it had never been in a shed the whole time i owned it.

Cant see how thas bad advice.



Bob.

Hi Bob I don't think what you said was wrong. I think others are more meticulous in their approach.

The fact that your mowers give you good service is evidence that your method works.

I am taking the block to a fellow who is going to see if a hone will sort it out for me. He seems to think, as people have said here that it is a build up of piston material in the bore moreso than gouging of the iron. To me it feels gouged though.

Cheers

Bob, you made it clear that you were offering a simple, basic solution for people who wanted that and were prepared to sacrifice some engine life to get it. I don't see any problem with putting that in front of people as an alternative. In other words I agree with you, it wasn't bad advice.

Aldot, see what the guy with the hone says.

Perhaps you could put that back together as a 'rougher' engine and keep the mower as a spare.
If youve got mates that like to borrow things, that would be a good one.

Or just keep the motor, It takes stuff all to swap the motors over.


Cheers, Bob.

Hi fellas, today I had the bore honed/deglazed. It seems to have come up OK. I threw in a new piston and rings, new head gasket, new starter oring. Tonight I washed out the main bearing and crank housing till I got clear/clean fluid coming out and no grit. I cleaned out the exhaust port and then dripped in some clean oil on the bearings and cylinder.

Just on initial turn over with a drill and no exhaust or carby in place I got 80psi with unbedded rings. I have no idea what pressures these things run but it "felt" similar to the compression I get from my other two stroke on the starter cord.

The carby was stuffed too. The guy I bought it off had cross threaded the jet screw. So I got hold of a second hand carby.

The engine is assembled but I have to put the carb together then mount it and fire it up. I'll see how it goes in the morning.

Hopefully the old donk has missed hitting the scrap heap or I have just wasted another wad of cash.

If you've got the base engine properly prepared, a good carburetor, and a clean fuel tank and fuel filter, you have the basics aldot, the rest is detail. Even if it doesn't run immediately, there is only the ignition system and the decompressor (if it has one) left. Both are easily replaced. Sounds like you'll have it back near enough to new condition tomorrow.

Ive got an 8mm bolt, a long one i had in the bolt draw, one with a good bit of non threaded shaft on it, i cut the head off and cut a slot in it.
Then i lost it and i grabbed a 8mm manifold stud out of the drawer, then i found it again.


Serves two purposes, makes it easier when mounting the engines with the frame tipped on its side. Gives it something to hang and piviot off while you line the bolts up.
Second is it will easily take the weight of the engine when done up in a vice. I usually hang the engine in the vice once its together (usually just the crank and piston in with the starter on) and once you have the coil mounted check the spark. If its no good check the connections and make sure the ignition module is getting a good earth. The rivet can work loose or be a bad connection.

Saves having to put the motor on and off the frame to be able to get a decent spin up.


Not sure how you work it with the drill, on the disc nut thread i would assume, could easily spin it up to check spark.



If its just for a spare you dont need a new decompressor. Just put an old plug in it, will be a bit harder to start.


Bob.