There are millions of Briggs engines out there that have given years of trouble free service. Certain series have given their fare share of grief but no reason to condemn the entire line. Other brands have their share too.
Not condemning the entire line. In fact I was only quoting the OP. In fact I had an Exmark with an 18 hp Briggs that was an absolute delight. Much smoother than any small engine i've used, quieter than any Kawasaki or Kohler, and with 500 trouble free hours over 12 years, I would recommend a vanguard to anyone. In fact, when my step-dad went to purchase a new ZTR I pushed him towards the Vanguard 28 EFI and he has been very pleased with it.
a lot of people like to knock on Honda for using plastic parts inside the crankcase, yet I have over 15 years of personal experience using Honda small engines without a single failure.
no piece of equipment is made perfect and all of them will fail eventually. A lot of their failures going to poor quality control or poor maintenance. anything that was made in poor design at this point has likely been resolved with improvements and engineering so most small engines inherently are better now than they were years ago, regardless of who's manufacturing that engine.
