Posted: 10/27/2012 3:16:58 PM EDT
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Went out to run my mower over the yard to pick up leaves before the winter and give the yard it's last cut of the year. When I started my husqvarna mower up it ran like crap, no power and sounded funny. I got to looking at things and eventually figured out it was only firing on one of the two cylinders. I pulled the valve cover on the non-running cyl and found one of the pushrods lying loose and bent into a bananna shape. It's a 23 HP b&s that's been taken care of. Regular oil/filter changes and plugs. The latter part of the summer the mower seemed a 'little' down on power but not too bad.
So how bad is it guys? Is the engine trashed or is this an inexpensive fix? It's going to the dealer Monday but i'd like some advance notion if you've got'em. |
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Should be a easy fix. I would guess the valve setting became loose over time and the push rod got misaligned and got bent or the mounting stud for the rocker arm loosened causing the same effect. Probably a new push rod and adjust all the valves and will be good to go.
An outside possibility is the valve guide moved in the cylinder had causing the failure and a new head,pushrod and possibly valve need to be replace. A very outside possibility is a flattened cam shaft lobe, by now you understand the scenario. I give the first scenario a 95% shot at being the problem. I have seen it several times. |
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The first option sure sounds a lot nicer for me. There's nothing in the owners manual about adjusting valves. Is this something I should expect to do on a periodic basis? I've got around 260 hours on the mower btw. If I get out of this with the cheap option is there any other ' gotcha' I need to be on the lookout for?
I will confess I had visions of a totally trashed engine. |
| You're probably be going to be better off to buy a head, they usually come assembled, a set of gaskets and the repair manual. I've seen this with a bunch of Kawasaki engines as well. Its usually from a valve sticking. The heads should come assembled and ready to go. |