Burning Oil - Kohler Courage 21 hp

jhanderson5

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I have a 2012 Husqvarna with a Kohler Courage 21 hp SV610 motor. I've never had any trouble with it, until now. It started fine, but when I engaged the blades, dark smoke came out of the exhaust and the engine choked itself. I waited a few minutes, attempted to start again, but it continued to burn oil. There's oil dipping out of the muffler, and when I removed the air filter, there was noticable oil in the carburetor. Seems bad. Any ideas?
 

keakar

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sounds like a blown head gasket to me

pull the head and see if thats the problem, im sure it will be
 

Scrubcadet10

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Check the crankcase oil level an be sure it isn't overfull or smells like gasoline or is thinned out... if that checks out, then I'm with keakar.
 

jhanderson5

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LOL. I have not found anything nice online about the Courage. Thanks, everyone. The oil level was fine, not overfull. No sign of gas in the oil. Other than the motor, the mower is in great shape. I hate to scrap it and buy new. How feasible would it be to swap motors? It's a Husqvarna YTH21K46.
 

Scrubcadet10

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headgasket replacement would be easier, don't worry about repowering until it takes a crap.

my courage 19 is 10 years old, the needle failed in the carb last year. Only problem so far, 280 hours
 

gainestruk

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headgasket replacement would be easier, don't worry about repowering until it takes a crap.

my courage 19 is 10 years old, the needle failed in the carb last year. Only problem so far, 280 hours
I agree, as of yesterday's mowing my 18 hp Courage has 817.5 hours, it's never been open up, change oil, spark plug and air filter each year, each year before starting season I check bolts under blower housing to make sure torque is correct and every 200 or so hrs adjust valves, I have nothing but praise for my Courage.
 

keakar

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LOL. I have not found anything nice online about the Courage. Thanks, everyone. The oil level was fine, not overfull. No sign of gas in the oil. Other than the motor, the mower is in great shape. I hate to scrap it and buy new. How feasible would it be to swap motors? It's a Husqvarna YTH21K46.
why scrap it? a head gasket is only like $10 and takes about an hour tops to replace, and thats taking your time, and a long break in there somewhere

watch this video, its the command twin but the process is the same for the courage, just with only one head

that said, i hate kohlers too but throwing out a good working engine you can fix for just a few dollars is just silly
 

bertsmobile1

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LOL. I have not found anything nice online about the Courage. Thanks, everyone. The oil level was fine, not overfull. No sign of gas in the oil. Other than the motor, the mower is in great shape. I hate to scrap it and buy new. How feasible would it be to swap motors? It's a Husqvarna YTH21K46.

The bucket engine was a breakthrough model for Kohler and one of the best designs I have seen in decades.
It was designed to be 100% machine assembled and is still the only ride on engine that gives you easy and CLEAN access to the oil filter.
Because the closure plate is up the top as is the governor there is nothing to leak down the bottom and the engine will run at the greatest angle of any vertical shaft engine before oil starvation kills a rod.

Likle all new designs they had a few teething problems
1) because of a change in crankshaft material from forged steel to malleable iron they had to use a bigger heavier counter weight.
This created different vibration charasterics resulting is SOME engines loosening the front bolts & the block cracking.
This was corrected by the application of loc-tite to the offending bolts.
A lot of mechanics failed to engage the top of the cam shaft properly causing cam gear failures then blamed the plastic gears.
There were some failure of the ACR mechanism on some of the exhaust cams.

Because the big box nearest me was a Husqvarna dealer & because of the high price of importing mowers to OZ nearly all of the Huskies they sold were fitted with Kohlers .
I have seen 3 faulty engines , ar less but probably the same percentage wise as Briggs Intek failures .
Apart from the Murrays which are fitted with Chinese made Briggs engines, all the cheap Chinese ride ons we get here are all fitted with the Kohler bucket engines and because Kohler USA had found all of the issues with the engines, none of the Chinese made Kohlers have given my customers a single second of problems.
 
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