Engine HONDA GC160 Pressure Washer

[bankerae]

Hello all,

My GC160 recently exploded the camshaft. I split the cases to clean out debris and reassembled it with the new parts and fresh adjusted valves... I did not pay any attention to dis-assembly of the governor

fyi no throttle lever on this application

Open first operation I thought she was good to go... starts normal and operates normal and sounds normal for about a minute. Then a slow process starts where as I let go of the pressure washer trigger (therefore going into throttle down mode) the idle goes really low (almost stalls) and then as I press the trigger again it idles up not as far and the pressure is lower... eventually the engine cuts off and will not start until it cools down. I will note that it seems a little hard to pull the started rope when it is warmed up... As far as governor adjustment I pull the governor lever back so throttle is 100% open and then rotate governor arm clockwise until it stops. There seems to be very little rotation in the governor shaft compared to open throttle vs closed throttle...

What is perplexing is that it operates normal for 1-2 mins until it heats up!

Thanks in advance for your advice and time!

Austin

 

[robert@honda]

Hello all,

My GC160 recently exploded the camshaft. I split the cases to clean out debris and reassembled it with the new parts and fresh adjusted valves... I did not pay any attention to dis-assembly of the governor

fyi no throttle lever on this application

Open first operation I thought she was good to go... starts normal and operates normal and sounds normal for about a minute. Then a slow process starts where as I let go of the pressure washer trigger (therefore going into throttle down mode) the idle goes really low (almost stalls) and then as I press the trigger again it idles up not as far and the pressure is lower... eventually the engine cuts off and will not start until it cools down. I will note that it seems a little hard to pull the started rope when it is warmed up... As far as governor adjustment I pull the governor lever back so throttle is 100% open and then rotate governor arm clockwise until it stops. There seems to be very little rotation in the governor shaft compared to open throttle vs closed throttle...

What is perplexing is that it operates normal for 1-2 mins until it heats up!

Thanks in advance for your advice and time!

Austin

Step 1 would be to isolate the trouble to either the pump or the engine. Perhaps unbolting the pump and testing the engine alone would at least tell you if the engine was running properly, and responded to the throttle, use a tach to confirm engine RPM, etc. If all that checks out, examine the pump for issues.

 

[bankerae]

Thanks Robert. With the pressure washer pump removed how would you control the throttle speed without having the pump initiating the idle up/down?

 

[robert@honda]

Thanks Robert. With the pressure washer pump removed how would you control the throttle speed without having the pump initiating the idle up/down?

Not sure on your pressure washer...is there some linkage between the pump and the throttle on the engine? I may be thinking of the general-purpose GC160, which has a manual throttle lever. The "pressure-washer" version of the engine may be different?

 

[bankerae]

No linkage between pump & engine, just a spline gear off of crankshaft. This version has no throttle lever (just the butterfly arm on top of the carb).. I've never really understand the principals of it's operation to be honest. I guess it runs at a constant speed and then under load as pump engages the governor opens the carb all the way?

 

[bankerae]

After examining it some more tonight I am going to narrow it down to 2 things:

- the governor arm is not moving at all whether or not pressure washer wand is spraying or not, therefore not changing under load.. I wonder if my setting of the governor was incorrect...

- and once again as it warms up it will eventually shut off and not restart until cooled down (which it has never done before!)

the real question is if these two are related, if it was one issue it would be easier to solve the mystery in my opinion...