danieljamestravis
Forum Newbie
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2023
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I have a Craftsman YT3000 with a Briggs and Stratton 331877 2371 G5 engine (21 HP ride-on). It was running fine until I was wrapping up my last mow and was about 2 minutes from shutting down and heading to the garage when suddenly the RPMs spiked a ton. I lowered the throttle to about 1/2 or maybe even 1/3 (just above the normal idle) where the mower sounded to be back at normal full operating RPMs to finish, but it’s surging still a bit up and down. I assumed it was a carb issue and replaced that along with the fuel and air filters to rule out those. I also checked the linkage and springs to the throttle and governor and those seem to be working appropriately but I’m no small engine expert. I can hold the governor arm over and the engine idles perfectly, but as soon as I let go, the RPMs are a bit too high when set to idle, and forget about putting the throttle in run, it sounds like she’s gonna blow up. I also checked to make sure the governor setting was correct and hadn’t slipped or anything of the sort which seems to be fine to me. Anything easy left for me to check before taking the motor apart and inspecting / replacing the governor gear and or flyweights or something else within? The governor shaft sticking out of the motor connected to the governor arm seems to be able to rotate about 20 degrees to “reset” it so that seemed okay to me but is it normal for this governor shaft to be able to move in and out of the motor by about 1/16 of an inch (if I had to guess), or could that be an indication something broke loose inside? I tried looking through old posts on similar makes and models but wasn’t able to find an exact solution for my issue here. Thanks in advance!