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Had just got done rebuilding a HS50 Tecumseh on a wood splitter. It started right up and ran perfect. The only thing was it would only run for about 5 min's and the engine would quit running. One pull with the rope and it would be running again with the same problem over again. I was thinking a fuel problem but everything was new. So being desperate I just ran a bypass fuel line right to the carburetor and problem solved. The only thing that I added to the fuel line was a new shut off valve. The shut off valve was made in China and for some reason the fuel would stop flowing through the valve after I would run the engine for a short time. Who would think you could have a problem with a simple fuel shut off valve. Just more Chinese junk to watch out for.

This is hard to believe! A valve failling. Something so simple!!! Gonna have to get one made in the US I guess.

Yep some God fearing, church going, flag saluting American has gone to China with a good quality USA made in line fuel valve and asked them to make 1,000,000 that look just like this for 10¢ each and that is exactly what they did.
If you pop it apart you will find the rubbe seal swolen and perhaps even a little sticky because it is made from neoprene or just plain synthetic rubber instead of Buytyl rubber.

Then he sold them to some smug distributor for 50¢ who sold them to the retailers for $ 1.00 who sold it to you for $ 2.50

I dropped on of my suppliers over the exact same thing.
I had to do about 30 warrantee repairs to replace the faulty valves.
The ones I got supplied as a replacement were just as bad, just the valve was a different color so a second bunch of warrantee jobs and the account closed.
They were dumbfounded that I would close the account over such a trivial thing.
The fact that it represented in a total lack of any sort of quality control escaped them and if they could not get a tap right what were the chances on something complicated like a module filter or blade.

I did buy the valves wholesale and bought 6 of them. So I bought 6 junk valves not one at 1 dollar each. So that is 6 dollars out the window. That isn't the bad part, it was over the hours of labor trying to find out why the gas would stop flowing that I had to eat. I have bought a lot of filters and a few tools from the same company with very good luck with them. I only buy from this company once a year at a trade show so I stock up.

Could hsve been a lot worse
You might have 6 new customers telling every one you are a idiot because the mower you fixed stop working 3 weeks latter and then had to front 6 angry customers

bertsmobile1 said:

Could hsve been a lot worse
You might have 6 new customers telling every one you are a idiot because the mower you fixed stop working 3 weeks latter and then had to front 6 angry customers

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This is the reason I road test all my work before delivery. I am not perfect and will miss something at times, but not if I can help it. Just lucky I had a pile of fire wood to split. If you are in the repair trade you will know that things can be missed no matter how hard you try.

reynoldston said:

This is the reason I road test all my work before delivery. I am not perfect and will miss something at times, but not if I can help it. Just lucky I had a pile of fire wood to split. If you are in the repair trade you will know that things can be missed no matter how hard you try.

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Oh yeah.
There is a lot of acres of farm behind the workshop, 2-3 acres of roadside verge and nothing goes out till I have run at least 1/2 tank through it.
So easy to slip up and having anything up to 20 jobs running in the workshop at any one time does not help things.
Only testing trouble I do have is all the fencers, there are only so many places you can dig a 20" post hole.

bertsmobile1 said:

Oh yeah.
There is a lot of acres of farm behind the workshop, 2-3 acres of roadside verge and nothing goes out till I have run at least 1/2 tank through it.
So easy to slip up and having anything up to 20 jobs running in the workshop at any one time does not help things.
Only testing trouble I do have is all the fencers, there are only so many places you can dig a 20" post hole.

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20 jobs in the shop at one time, you sure are working at a larger scale then I am. I might get 25 to 30 jobs for the whole season but I am retired and only will work at one job at a time. How to you keep on tract as to what you are doing with that many jobs going at one time and the pressure to get the jobs done has to be out of this world. Sure glad its you and not me.

Yeah,
It gets a bit busy, we just got 4" of rain and it's been around 30 deg C so the jobs are pouring in the door.
The bulk go out in a week and simple things get done while the customer waits.
Most shops have a 2 week wait for a quote right now then another 7 to 10 days for the repair.
The MTD, Cox, Stihl & Shindawa warehouses all have minimum orders of $1000 to $ 10000 so I have to wait till the shops put in an order which is one reason why I buy so much direct from the USA.
Kohler parts are strait highway robbery so they have to come in from the US as well 3 to 5 weeks.
Stiga parts have to come in from the UK because the local distributor ( All Power) is a joke & Stens/ Ariens have just appointed them as their distribution agent. They have the record , 14 months for 2 spindles that were in stock at the warehouse when I placed the order.
Then I get impossible jobs like World Lawn where I have to go to the importer with the broken part so they can match it up to what they might have in the warehouse because they do not have their parts inventory listed by World Lawn part numbers.
I have 3 of their Honda look alikes waiting for Conwire to come back from holidays to remake the broken control cables. This costs more than the original part but is quicker and the cable will actually fit properly where as original parts often don't, ( Cheap Chineese to a T ).
The actual turn around is about 20 to 30 per week in season and 5 or so out of season May - September.
I have about a dozen old ride ons that are not sellable because of rust or missing bonnets etc , so they go out on loan for long time repairs.
Same for push mowers, got plenty of good reliable ones that are not pretty enough to get sold.
Ditto for chainsaws so the pressure for finishing a job is not too bad and I sell a lot of gear this way because they find the old mower I loaned them dose their lawns quicker & easier than the new wizz bang, way too big mower I am repairing.

It sounds to me that a part time repair business in Australia is impossible. I thought that parts was a problem here in the USA because I sure couldn't afford to go through what you have to buy parts. If that is such a problem with a lawn mower what does a car or large truck owner do for repairs in Australia. Sounds to me that the customer is the loser over there. If someone depended on a vehicle to make a living and it needed repairs it could put them out of business.

Yeah, being an independant small business down here is tough, which is why so many fail.
The problems stems from managements ( including governments ) with a dominant white anglo male, over inflated, sense of their own self importance.
This is further fuled by the reliance of the education system on US market theory.
So we have people making decision based on the market being unlimited for a tiny market of 30,000,000.
There is only 11,000,000 houses in the entire country which when you think of it is a tiny market to share between 30 mower brands.
Aparently 10% of these are maintained by contractors so the volume of new mowers sold is quite small even if you allow for a new mower every 5 years.
Thus the fixed cost of warehousing & distribution are huge particularly when you look at the population spred and low volume sales of individual brands.
So people like me, who keep old mowers running, regardless of the brand are not looked on favourably.
The government is hell bent on making us a "free & open" market while the market is hell bent on being closed & restrictive.

Sounds crazy down there! I thought it sucked getting parts from the U.S. here in Canada, but after reading about what you go thru it isn't that bad.

Yes in theory you buy into a dealer network, if a franchise area is available.
Then the agency tells you what you can and can not sell.

I get a lotof repairs in becausse I am willing to do the legwork to find an alternaive source for parts.

But getting back to the original topic.
Just went to fix my favourite ( har har ) mower.
A World Lawn Cobra.
This is supposedly designed in the USA & fabricated in China.
This time he had bent a blade , about 10 degrees off horizontal, not a big problem I thought other than it had thrown the bottom bearing.
However 3 hours latter the blade and slightly wobbly bearing caused the spindle pulley to split into 3 pieces.
Pulleys, bearings, belts, blades all not covered by warrantee so another $ 500 bill coming his way.
So much for a "cheap" 60" mower.

Ouch! Client was better off buying a commercial grade mower made by a reliable company.

I stay away from those companies. Cheap Chineese knock off Exmark mowers.

I used to deal with Sean with Red Roo Equipment down there. They manufactured power equipment in Itawoomba. Sean was originally from Mississippi. He would come up to the states a few times a year and would purchase manufacturing supplies and load up a container to ship back. It was a mountain of paperwork to get the containers shipped back and also using UPS and FedEx on small shipments.

Berts, Congrats, an aussie won the bike DAKAR!



Now I have to talk about an impressive mechanism made in China. It is the electronic rain gauge I have had for several years. It says made in China. If they could pull that quality off in an AC engine they would have something. Some of you may have these. It has a little dual ended catch cup which dumps .04 inches of rain out and then saves the count for 24 hours. Any way the unit is mechanically well executed. Little brass inserts, stainless steel shafts, o-ringed battery cover, conformal coated pc board, stainless strainer , on and on. It is a joy to disassemble and clean. They CAN do it if they try. ( I still won't buy chinese tires)

motoman said:

Berts, Congrats, an aussie won the bike DAKAR!



Now I have to talk about an impressive mechanism made in China. It is the electronic rain gauge I have had for several years. It says made in China. If they could pull that quality off in an AC engine they would have something. Some of you may have these. It has a little dual ended catch cup which dumps .04 inches of rain out and then saves the count for 24 hours. Any way the unit is mechanically well executed. Little brass inserts, stainless steel shafts, o-ringed battery cover, conformal coated pc board, stainless strainer , on and on. It is a joy to disassemble and clean. They CAN do it if they try. ( I still won't buy chinese tires)

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Back in the early 50's if it was made in Japan it was cheap junk, only now its China 60 years later. I do think China will get their act together but for now its all to do with money. As you said they can build quality electronic rain gauges but don't buy their fuel shut off valves or tires.

It is not China.
It is the rip of merchants in good old USA asking them to make cheap garbage to sell to you.
China has the largest number of satellites currently in space.
They built them themselves , launched them themselves and control them themselves.
China is every bit as capable of making better than Rolls Royce quality.
However they make what we order and we order the cheapest garbage that looks like top shelf so we can make a lot of money defrauding Joe public while blaiming the Chineese.
Some trillionare probably bought another seaside block of apartments in Florida with the profits he made on those dodgy taps.

Congratulation to Australia whose native son won the DAKAR bike race----anyone there?? Oh well, front porch I guess.