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Hello all, I bought a Bad Boy Maverick on Sunday at the local Rural King. Ran it about an hour Sunday evening and everything went great. I really enjoyed mowing with it vs my old Gravely ZTX-52. Yesterday evening I mowed my back pastures and again, it mowed fantastic. When i was done, i brought it back to the shed and set parking brake and lowered throttle and it started surging almost like it was starving for fuel or something. Dropped it all the way to idle and it continued. As soon as i throttled all the way up the surging went away but if it is half or less throttle the surging just continues. It also backfired once throttling down from full throttle to idle. The mower has 2.5 hours on it now so this is pretty frustrating. Any ideas what I should check for before I bring it in under warranty? I fueled up with 4 gal of 87 octane gas straight from the pump at a high volume station on my way home yesterday. I was thinking about pulling the fuel filter tonight when i get home just to make sure that nothing is causing a blockage.

Sounds like a blocked/plugged idle circuit in the carburetor... i'd let the warranty folks take care of it. you may the void warranty if you mess with it. sometimes they're picky about stuff like that,

Scrubcadet10 said:

Sounds like a blocked/plugged idle circuit in the carburetor... i'd let the warranty folks take care of it. you may the void warranty if you mess with it. sometimes they're picky about stuff like that,

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Good advice for a just purchase new mower. The problem will be Rural King would to send it to one their contracted repair centers.

StarTech said:

Good advice for a just purchase new mower. The problem will be Rural King would to send it to one their contracted repair centers.

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I found one not far from me, i just went to the BB website, I know better than to let RK try and wrench on my stuff.

Follow up: Kudos to Rural King of Ocala, they stepped it up and replaced the mower with a new one. I ended up having to pay $300 to upgrade to the Honda engine which i wasn't too happy about but they didn't have any of the Kawi's left so I bent a little. I couldn't afford to be without a mower in the peak of the season. It ended up being something with the carburetor float bowl. It was also leaking fuel (which was my last straw since it was leaking onto the muffler) I gave them the opportunity to try and fix it when I brought it in and they played around with it for about 30 minutes but as soon as they put the float bowl back on the carb and it still leaked i said "You're switching this one out", and they did.
Ran the new one for about an hour when I got home in my front pasture and it did well. As good as the Kawi did cutting but at idle this one is quiet as a church mouse. Hope it lasts.

Interesting
I was under the impression that Honda had abandoned the ride on mower engine market
Is this a horizontal shaft Honda engine
The only ones I have seen for a long while are in small skid steers .

Bert, it is the Honda GXV 688cc.

Interesting
Honda was supposed to have ceased production of the GXV series over 200 cc back in 2012.
Does it have the universal crank case with bolt holes for both horizontal & vertical mounting ?

15 hour follow-up: I absolutely LOVE my Bad Boy Maverick 54"! The 688cc Honda engine is a beast and noticeably quieter than the Kawasaki. Even though it is a smaller displacement, I have had zero issues of bogging or anything else. It is extremely fuel efficient as well. I really enjoy the bushing suspension although I have learned that I need to be cognizant of its limitations in the fact that it can scalp during the compression cycle of the bushings. This is where a suspension seat may be of more benefit as a rigid suspension will follow land contours better. It's a trade-off i guess. I'm overdue for first oil change but can already tell it will be much easier to complete than the POS engineering of my old Gravely.

Honda makes good engines no issues that I know of. Like the other guys said I haven't seen a Honda engine on a new mower in years.

hlw49 said:

Honda makes good engines no issues that I know of. Like the other guys said I haven't seen a Honda engine on a new mower in years.

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If I'm not mistaken, my boss told me some of the 2022 Bad Boys she ordered, have Hondas......since this B&S fiasco....she ordered Kaw, Kohler and Hondas....NO B&S engines! She also said BB dropped Yamaha engines, I think only because lack of availability!

Kinda of surprised they dropped Yamaha for anything other than supply issues, to me they are very close to Honda in build quality.

I have yet to see a Yamaha engine on a mower but like Scrub said probably real close to Honda in quality.

hlw49 said:

I have yet to see a Yamaha engine on a mower but like Scrub said probably real close to Honda in quality.

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BB had a 33hp Yamaha EFI engine and a few others, on some 2021 mowers

Bad Boy has used Yamaha engines for a long time. In fact, the dealer where I bought mine last spring only orders them with Yamaha engines (unless someone specifically requests another one). The Yamaha on my 2021 Rogue is a 37hp EFI.

UFLBret said:

Hello all, I bought a Bad Boy Maverick on Sunday at the local Rural King. Ran it about an hour Sunday evening and everything went great. I really enjoyed mowing with it vs my old Gravely ZTX-52. Yesterday evening I mowed my back pastures and again, it mowed fantastic. When i was done, i brought it back to the shed and set parking brake and lowered throttle and it started surging almost like it was starving for fuel or something. Dropped it all the way to idle and it continued. As soon as i throttled all the way up the surging went away but if it is half or less throttle the surging just continues. It also backfired once throttling down from full throttle to idle. The mower has 2.5 hours on it now so this is pretty frustrating. Any ideas what I should check for before I bring it in under warranty? I fueled up with 4 gal of 87 octane gas straight from the pump at a high volume station on my way home yesterday. I was thinking about pulling the fuel filter tonight when i get home just to make sure that nothing is causing a blockage.

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If at all possible, I'd recommend finding ethanol-free gas to run in your machine. Much better for small engines, especially for your seals.

most everything built in the last 10 years or so is rated and built to work fine with E10 fuel.

lugbolt said:

most everything built in the last 10 years or so is rated and built to work fine with E10 fuel.

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Think everyone agrees E-10 is deadly to OPE equipment.

Yes most toys are rated for E-10.

Doesn't mean you won't have issues on it. As in less mpg, less hp, harder cold starts, water in fuel system and fuel system corrosion. All well know issues with E-10.

On one truck at work, 2016 Suburban. It gets 12 mpg on real gas. 9 on E-10. Info coming from the trucks computer as average mpg. In this vehicle, equates to a 25% loss in mpg and noticeable lack of power.

So E-10 gets you 9 miles down the road on one gallon. On real gas, truck is 3 miles ahead of you. By the time you buy another 1/3 of a gallon to = that 12 mile distance, cost savings is ZERO. Or in today's Joe Biden prices, costs you more to drive on E-10.

E-10 was introduced as a quick & dirty way to meet the initial world agreed emissions reductions.
The logic behind it is you burn 1.75 C-H4 ethanol molecules to get the same Hp as 1 C8-H18 ( petrol )
This is a bit simplified but basically because the ratio of H to C in ethanol is 4:1 and Octane is 2,25:1 ,so for the same energy, ethanol puts out 1.75 CO2 molecules and 3,5 H20 molecules where as petrol puts out 6 CO2 & 9 H20 molecules so less CO2 comes out the tail pipe.
When I used to be involved in racing, the same size engine would run a 450-500 main jet on ethanol as compared to a 300-325 main jet for petrol .
Sounds all warn & fuzzy in theory, save the planet less CO2 but in reality it is like urinating in the ocean unless we move to gasahol which is 85 to 90 and what South Africa ran during the BS trade embargo days & I think Brazil still runs to reduce foreign debt from buying crude .
Converting to strait Hydrogen is a far better way of doing the same thing except distributing hydrogen is a problem as it has a bad habit of going BANG, big time.
Trains & heavy transport will most likely go to hydrogen
Cat & JCB are already supplying hydrogen engines for heavy equipment where batteries would end up weighing more than the bulldoze they were trying to push.