Export thread

So Initially when I'd try to start the mower it would run for 2-3 seconds and turn off. It seemed like it would blow a puff of air right as it died. Of course I did not get any videos of the original symptom.

I drained the gas and filled with new gas. No change in behavior.

I tried cranking it like 30 times and mower would just run 2-3 seconds and then shut itself off.

I recently replaced the spark plug less than a year ago. I made sure the boot was tightly on the spark plug and decided to look at the carb. I have never messed with a carburetor before and this has an auto choke system. I of course have no idea how things went together before I took off the two bolts to the air filter housing.

Can anyone by any chance confirm this is the correct movement? No idea if these parts are together correctly lol.


Now it will run but with very low idle. Not sure if I made the problem better or worse lol.


It seems I can get the mower to rev up pretty well by pushing on the bottom arm that manipulates the choke? Vroom Vroom?


Any ideas on what I should do next? ANY help is greatly appreciated.

Ok,

As usual, it looks like maybe I may have been over complicating it. Once I understood a little better how the system works I was able to determine that this doohickey (governor arm?) was bent!

Seems like it was bent in too much, can anyone confirm?



As you can see in the 3rd picture I moved it out with my hand. The mower ran a little better but was still surging. It stopped and I couldn't get it started again. Only had a few minutes to look at it though. Will troubleshoot some more this PM.

From your description and pics I’m willing to bet that it needs to be cleaned. That said, the price of Honda carbs is cheaper than trying to clean the carb. Part number for a new carb is 16100-Z8B-901 and costs around $22.00.

Rivets said:

From your description and pics I’m willing to bet that it needs to be cleaned. That said, the price of Honda carbs is cheaper than trying to clean the carb. Part number for a new carb is 16100-Z8B-901 and costs around $22.00.

Click to expand...

Ok, great. I had run across a carb assembly on ebay for around $20 but wasn't sure it is what I needed. Mower is probably a few years old. So it sounds like this is very much a rip and replace operation. Meaning I take out the old one and chunk it and put the new one in it's place? If so heck I'd spend the ~$25-30 after tax and shipping or what not to do it myself and not have to worry about if it is dirty.

Well good news is the mower starts fine now. Starts right up and runs for about 60-90 seconds then the carb valve opens up (I am verifying the valve behind the air filter is opening in case I am saying it wrong) and the governor arms start hunting around and the mower dies and will not start back up until cold.

Still sound like carb or something else? I am going to order one regardless but just wondering if my issue could be something else.

Sounds like it is still running lean, which leads me back to what I originally posted.

Rivets said:

Sounds like it is still running lean, which leads me back to what I originally posted.

Click to expand...

Ok, great. Ordered, should be here by this weekend. I will report back what I find.

Looks like the gov arm got derped to me and bent. Does not explain choke issues, but certainly does explain the incorrect speed . . . The balance between the gov and those springs determines RPM, and it's bent, that's way off. Canle the crap off where the gov shaft exits the block at the bottom of the lever, and make sure that there are no cracks that would cause it to shift, and if so, replace the arm and set the gov accordingly. If not, see if you can find a photo of one that works . . . bent/mangled/gorilla-fisted gov limks are the fastest way to get instability and surging that I can think of.

tadawson said:

Looks like the gov arm got derped to me and bent. Does not explain choke issues, but certainly does explain the incorrect speed . . . The balance between the gov and those springs determines RPM, and it's bent, that's way off. C.ean the crap off where the gov haft exits the block at the bottom of the lever, and make sure that there are no cracks that would cause it to shift, and if so, replace the arm and set the gov accordingly. If not, see if you can find a photo of one that works . . . bent/mangled/gorilla-fisted gov limks are the fastest way to get instability and surging that I can think of.

Click to expand...

Ok, I'll have to clean it up and have a look. Does it look bad in this picture? I thought maybe it was good but guess I'll have to hunt down an example photo to verify.

I really don’t see anything wrong with the governor arm.

philipgonzales3 said:

Ok, I'll have to clean it up and have a look. Does it look bad in this picture? I thought maybe it was good but guess I'll have to hunt down an example photo to verify.

View attachment 51056

Click to expand...

Here is a page out of the GCV160 shop manual. It illustrates and has steps for proper governor adjustment. Providing the governor lever is not bend these steps should work for you. Also, have another person help you keep the lever secure while tightening down the faster. Here some advice, get a inexpensive RPM gauge off of Amazon and check the RPM, I got one for something like $20. One more thing, if the spring between the governor level and other end is loose, that will give you a false indication that you didn't adjust the governor correctly, when in fact you did. This happened to me and the fast idle was about 2400 RPM and I knew I adjusted the governor level correctly. What I did was slightly shorten one end of the spring and got the fast idle to slightly under 3100 RPM, which is practicality dead on. Now, having said all that if the engine is still surging, it is a Carburetor issue and needs to be rebuilt. There are plenty of videos on tube with respect to rebuilding these Honda small engine carburetors. Typically what happens with these Honda GCV carbs is that the emulsion tube gets clogged and the low idle circuit gets clogged as well. I help this helps.

In the pic to the far left, I think I see a crack at the second bend in (first bend coming from the gov shaft) which is why I suggested you look. Between the small shot and the dirt, I just can't be certain. Sure looks like the tear I would expect from being bent in the direction it was, though . . . In any case, should be obvious in person.

tadawson said:

In the pic to the far left, I think I see a crack at the secomd bend in (forst bend coming from the gov shaft) which is whyI suggesyed you look. Between the small shot and the dirt, I just can't be certain. Sure looks like the tear I would expect from beingbent in the direction it was, though . . . In any case, should be obvious in person.

Click to expand...

tadawson: O, shit you're right. That needs to be corrected first. The spring is not parallel between both ends. That could indeed explain some bad idle characteristics.

Tadawson: I finally found a guy locally who bored and honed my GXV120 block to .050 over. This dude is actually a machinist who is a Honda small engine Master mechanic and has his own machine shop at his house, its freaking awesome. I have a sonic cleaner (Harbor Freight, don't judge and cleaned every damn nut, bolt, etc. The insides are squeaky clean (block, sump, crank, Cam, drive assembly, etc. My GXV120 is going to run sweet after I'm finished with it. Here is a video I made for another forum (on Facebook) showing the gear train from a PTO perspective, but it just an illustration, not how it is reassembled. The file is too large, have to provide a URL.

Rivets said:

I really don’t see anything wrong with the governor arm.

Click to expand...

@Rivets you rock!

Took a whole 10 minutes to swap the carb out. Started on the first pull and ran for over 4 minutes until I shut it off. Then I started it again and cut the front yard with it. Zero issues now at least to my inexperienced self.

Let me know if I can buy you a case of beer or a few rolls of toilet paper. I would be more than happy to shoot you over a few dollars for your time and knowledge.

Any ideas on how I would service the old one? I'm just curious to learn more about carburetors just in case I ever needed to service one in a pickle. It may be more involved that I am willing to put up with but figured if I break the old one, no biggie.

Chris Parman said:

Here is a page out of the GCV160 shop manual. It illustrates and has steps for proper governor adjustment. Providing the governor lever is not bend these steps should work for you. Also, have another person help you keep the lever secure while tightening down the faster. Here some advice, get a inexpensive RPM gauge off of Amazon and check the RPM, I got one for something like $20. One more thing, if the spring between the governor level and other end is loose, that will give you a false indication that you didn't adjust the governor correctly, when in fact you did. This happened to me and the fast idle was about 2400 RPM and I knew I adjusted the governor level correctly. What I did was slightly shorten one end of the spring and got the fast idle to slightly under 3100 RPM, which is practicality dead on. Now, having said all that if the engine is still surging, it is a Carburetor issue and needs to be rebuilt. There are plenty of videos on tube with respect to rebuilding these Honda small engine carburetors. Typically what happens with these Honda GCV carbs is that the emulsion tube gets clogged and the low idle circuit gets clogged as well. I help this helps.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info! I didn't see your reply until just now, I must have been on a cached version of the page up. Carb swap and she is running like a beauty! I will still get an RPM gauge to check if it is running at close to the correct RPM or not. Hoping I do not need to do the governor adjustment but will do so if needed (after verifying the arm or what not is OK). Thanks for the tips on the carb rebuild. I plan to look into this and play around with the old one and see if I can't get it working just to gain some XP. This is the most I have ever done on a mower... lol.

tadawson said:

In the pic to the far left, I think I see a crack at the second bend in (first bend coming from the gov shaft) which is why I suggested you look. Between the small shot and the dirt, I just can't be certain. Sure looks like the tear I would expect from being bent in the direction it was, though . . . In any case, should be obvious in person.

Click to expand...

Since I had already ordered the carb I went ahead and just swapped it out and good news is she is running great now! At least to me. I was so excited that she is now running that I did not think to look more at the arms. I will clean up the arms and have a better look. I assume since she is running it may not be too bad but I will have a look and check the RPM's too, so that I can learn how this thing works for the future.

philipgonzales3 said:

Thanks for the info! I didn't see your reply until just now, I must have been on a cached version of the page up. Carb swap and she is running like a beauty! I will still get an RPM gauge to check if it is running at close to the correct RPM or not. Hoping I do not need to do the governor adjustment but will do so if needed (after verifying the arm or what not is OK). Thanks for the tips on the carb rebuild. I plan to look into this and play around with the old one and see if I can't get it working just to gain some XP. This is the most I have ever done on a mower... lol.

Click to expand...

This happened to me five years ago, a idle surging issue. Five years later, I'm refurbishing older Honda lawn mower models (E,g., HR214 and HR215, because they're plentiful and cheap and have a light aluminum deck) to their original luster. I would say I'm obsessed with Honda lawn mowers. Almost every week I learn something new about Honda mowers.

Chris Parman said:

This happened to me five years ago, a idle surging issue. Five years later, I'm refurbishing older Honda lawn mower models (E,g., HR214 and HR215, because they're plentiful and cheap and have a light aluminum deck) to their original luster. I would say I'm obsessed with Honda lawn mowers. Almost every week I learn something new about Honda mowers.

Click to expand...

Sweet! I'll be happy if I become proficient enough to troubleshoot common problems on my mower but it is a great feeling knowing I fixed something with my own two hands (even if I did need help from the internet lol).

Forgot I took a video. About 1 minute give or take after I pulled the cord.

philipgonzales3 said:

Sweet! I'll be happy if I become proficient enough to troubleshoot common problems on my mower but it is a great feeling knowing I fixed something with my own two hands (even if I did need help from the internet lol).

Forgot I took a video. About 1 minute give or take after I pulled the cord.

Click to expand...

That sounds spot on there guy

No need to send anything, as there are about 5 other great techs on this forum who would have told you the same as I did. Just got lucky this time. Glad to hear that you got it going, thank you for letting us know, as most times we never hear back.

Rivets said:

No need to send anything, as there are about 5 other great techs on this forum who would have told you the same as I did. Just got lucky this time. Glad to hear that you got it going, thank you for letting us know, as most times we never hear back.

Click to expand...

philipgonzales3 is a straight up Dude, he is going far....

Chris Parman said:

This happened to me five years ago, a idle surging issue. Five years later, I'm refurbishing older Honda lawn mower models (E,g., HR214 and HR215, because they're plentiful and cheap and have a light aluminum deck) to their original luster. I would say I'm obsessed with Honda lawn mowers. Almost every week I learn something new about Honda mowers.

Click to expand...

My HR215 with GXV140 was surging a few years back. Changed the pilot jet, and been perfect again for 5+years - seems like given enough time, the plastic jets swell closed and forces it lean. Personally, II have *never* found a carb that could not be brought back to 100% (or darn close) in short order.

Old Honda carbs you could clean and rebuild with great success, but today’s carbs at such a low price, why waste the time.

Because the cheap ones are Chinese crap? Price an actual Honda carb, and rebuilding make almost 100% sense since it is so easy . . .

Anyone that thinks that an unbranded $12 offshore hunk of bad pot metal is equivalent to OEM just ain't right upstairs, at least as I see it . . .

tadawson said:

Because the cheap ones are Chinese crap? Price an actual Honda carb, and rebuilding make almost 100% sense since it is so easy . . .

Anyone that thinks that an unbranded $12 offshore hunk of bad pot metal is equivalent to OEM just ain't right upstairs, at least as I see it . . .

Click to expand...

Because of the large number of Honda clone engines coming out of China there is a lot of OEM parts available for them at very cheap prices.
BEcause of this Honda has drastically dropped the price of their genuine Honda parts which down here are about 1/3 of what they used to be when I kicked off 7 years ago .
Add to that my wholesle suppliers carry a good range of OEM Honda carbs that come with a 12 month warranty and they are less than the chargable hours for cleaning a badly gummed up or corroded carb.
Buying off Amazon / evilpay / Craigs is a lucky dip but most independent repair agents can supply quality carbs very cheaply.
As for "cheap pot metal" it is the same alloy that everyone uses and is the 100% best material for making a precision casting from that requires minimum machining .
The derogatory use of "pot metal" comes from ignorance of foundry technology .
In industry it is a general term used to cover all base metals that are melted in a lift out ( pot ) crucible furnace generally attached to a precision high speed high, pressure injection moulding machine that pops out hundreds of castings that are accurate to within 0.0001" every hour .
It came from the pig headed, pig ignorant British motorcycle publishing industry where the uneducated old timers considered any carb made form anything other than brass to be grossly inferiour .

You assume that ChinFatCo uses the same alloy and casting/machining tolerances as OEM . . .

That has *GOT* to be one of the funnoest and most absurd claims I have heard in years! Pure comedy gold!

By "pot metal" I was referring to whatever crap they can mix and melt today to sell some garbage parts . . . tomorrows batch may well be different . . .

tadawson said:

You assume that ChinFatCo uses the same alloy and casting/machining tolerances as OEM . . .

That has *GOT* to be one of the funnoest and most absurd claims I have heard in years! Pure comedy gold!

By "pot metal" I was referring to whatever crap they can mix and melt today to sell some garbage parts . . . tomorrows batch may well be different . . .

Click to expand...

Glad it brought you some pleasure
Actually you are not as far off as you think.
The composition of die cast white metals changes so fast that no 2 items are exactly the same.
Thus you toss what is also incorrectly called hardeners in at regular intervals to keep the metal within specifications.
The days of tossing a pile of scrap into the pot & hoping went out with hand ladeling , a process that you will only find in third world countries in back yard foundries .
And the equipment is usually sent there as "foreign aid" by countries like the USA & Australia after it had become totally uneconomic for local use.
There are no such machines in China and funny enough, never have been .
They are now the world leaders in both high volume & high precision die casting and have sent a lot of German foundries to the wall .
Not only that they are world leaders in making the casting machines , dies and design of both .
Modern high speed machines are very fussy about metal quality and temperature so the melt will always be good.
China is building a new foundry every 2 months so they are all brand spanking new .
The USA has only built 1 new foundry in the past 20 years and that is the GM foundry which was built with a "loan" from the Obama government which was commissioned in 2016 and is now in full production.

So the quality of the castings will be beyond doubt.
The quality of the assembly is another question all together .
Most of the cube carbs are totally machine built so if Miss Woo has put the right parts into the hopper then good carbs come out .

However I was not meaning to argue about quality or otherwise it was the degerogatory use of the term "Pot Metal " that needs correcting .
The range of alloys used for casting carburettors has not really changed much since the 50's apart from the fact that spectrochemistry has allowed far greater control over the specifications and in particular trace impurities that when my hand was signing the certificates were either listed as "trace impurities < 0.5 % " or ignored by typing "balance zinc ".
And we shipped thousands of tons of die cast zinc secondary foundry ingots to the USA every month .

As for the quality of Chinese carbs in general, most are better than what is made in the USA .
Where things get murky is the REJECTED ones that get sold ex-factory as defects at a knock dow rate then magically resold as OEM parts usually by an online vendor with a cyber shop.

"a process that you will only find in third world countries.. . ."

Yeah, like China . . . thanks for making my point "China: Where quality control is job *none* !"

And the "rejects sold via a cyber shop" pretty much sums up everything folks buy from eBay/Amazon/etc. no brand, no presence, no recourse . . . again, proving my point!

Waldron, Zama, Mikuni, Nikki, etc. all are used on today’s small engines and not one is manufactured in the USA. Can you name one small engine under 10hp which is built in the USA?

Next I suppose you will tell me the Coronavirus won’t last long because it came from China. Be careful when you make blanket statements, as they normally come back to haunt you.

There are only two trash sources from China.
One is the resale of parts that have been rejected because they were substandard
The other is the deliberate ordering of trash by 1st world billionairs , like the Waltons for Walmart to extract as much cash from fellow Americans for stuff they know is total junk.
China has faster jet fighters than the USA
China has more satelites in orbit than the USA

our opinions are coloured because of what you buy.
A friend of mine gets wiring looms made in China because a South African company came in and bough the only manufacturer down here then bulldozed the factories & built appartments .
So much for foreign investment benefiting the host country.
I speak to the factory owner from time to time.
Every time speak to him he can not understand why wealthy countries like the USA & Australia buy so much inferiour garbage that he could not sell internally in China.
He has over 1000 export customers and he reckons that there are less than 10 that do not demand that every order is cheaper than the previous one my mate being one of them .

All Chinese factories are demand pull , nothing gets made until it is ordered and what is ordered is what is supplied .
This applies particularly to quality.
But quality costs money and it is cheaper for Walmart / Lowes / Harbour Freight to over order than to get quality assured items .

And to deliberately miss quote what you were told just show how biased and closed your mind is.
If you think China is a 3rd world country you need to book a flight after all this Covid-19 stuff has died down
I used to be a metallurgist and as such still keep my toes in the water so I still subscribe to a lot of trade journals & am still a member of several professional societies , which is how I know what is happening foundry wise in China .
The media feed you images of rural and old villages which is about as representative of the entire country as a back block hilbilly farm is representative of the entire USA .
And I can assure you there is no third world foundries in China . India yes Africa definately but China is all brand new state of the art machinery substantially better than anything you will see in the USA working 24/7 to feed the varacious appetite of 1st world countires for cheaper goods.
People think the rise of China is all about slave labour working for 2 grains of rice an hour and in particular this is what the megga rich & senior management tout as the reason for outsourcing production stating that they can not compete in this "unfair" market .
This could not be further away from the truth .
Immediately , post Mao it may have been but it did not take long for the Chinese government to understand if they are to advance at the rates required it would take 21st century technology.
They looked at what has worked for other countries then took it to extreames.
Thus when capacity was exceeded they replaced the old machines with the biggest , fasted & best that would fit without regard to capital cost .
USA foundries when faced with a capacity limit looked around to where they could outsource from and when they finally were forced to invest in new equipment they will only purchase the SMALLEST machine that might be able to keep up with the current needs .
This is philosophy that came out of the USA in the 70's so capital outlay per item made in the lowest it can possibly be which they decided is a measure of how well they are managing the factory and one of the markers used to determine executive management bonuses .
We are not much better down here so I am not slinging mud at the USA alone.
When we needed new equipment we had to lie to the board and fudge both production figures & projected sales .
To say if we get this new machine it will have 85% idle time at current production levels which will allow us to expand our product line and increase profit will not get signatures on cheques unless we said we would sack 2 of the 3 shifts .
It had to show more profits from day one than could have been made by investing that money in shares or bonds or buying out a competitor.

This is the basic difference between China & India .
Add to that the Chinese government have a long term finance bank , something they pinched from Japan so a factory that makes 1 million $ gets to borrow 20 million $ to install new gear that should allow them to make 300 million $ in the future ,something that no western financial institution would even look at let alone approve .
Now to speed things up China pinched an idea from the Saudis .
When any one from the west wants to come in set up a factory to rape & pillage , they must do it as a joint developement so locals must own 30% or more of the enterprise .
So for instance Ford down here showed massive losses so paid no tax and distributed minimal dividends in Australia , all the profits went back to the USA

This meant that self developement capital became available because a reasonable amount of the profits stayed in China .
The reason why Denmark has such a high standard of living is all of the North Sea oil companies are PPP's with the government owning 51 % thus there is no way to disguise profits .
If you look at these oil platforms you will see they run at the highest profit levels of any off shore platforms.

They also looked at tax avoidance schemes like Apple charging their foreign subsidaries hundreds of million each year to use the apple logo which was copyright and Stihl charging their overseas factories royalties for making things for Stihl to sell that Stihl has patient on which is why Chinese patient laws allow factories to pay no royalties & ignores patient rights .

Many like to call this stealing IP but it is not. It is preventing the parent company using IP to steal profits from the local factory.
It is illegal in China to breach patient, unless you have been given permission to make that patiented item .
Thus Briggs China gave WooHoo the rights to make Nikki carbs and WooHoo is the only company that can make them.
However they can also make the exact same carb and not put Nikki on it to sell TO ORDER for another company .
They can not make a Nikki copy to sell for themselves, it has to be ordered first so any breach of patient becomes the liability of the person who ordered them not the factory .
Which in the case of a Nikki carb would be Oregon , Stens, Prime Line , Rotary etc etc etc .

China opens a new university every month and very shortly the USA will be buying IP from China .
Honda built a university which adjoins one of their automotive factories and is basically a research facility
Kawasaki had done the same thing .
LG has done the same thing.
By doing this the Chinese government allows the company a higher percentage ownership of the factory , but the university will own all IP that comes out of it .

philipgonzales3 said:

Ok,

As usual, it looks like maybe I may have been over complicating it. Once I understood a little better how the system works I was able to determine that this doohickey (governor arm?) was bent!

Seems like it was bent in too much, can anyone confirm?

View attachment 51049View attachment 51050View attachment 51051

As you can see in the 3rd picture I moved it out with my hand. The mower ran a little better but was still surging. It stopped and I couldn't get it started again. Only had a few minutes to look at it though. Will troubleshoot some more this PM.

Click to expand...

So what makes the governor arm move? Is it the auto-choke moving it by itself? Because it's not the bail lever near the handlebar. For me pulling that lever, only moves the thing above it.
My Honda HRR216 won't start at all, and I was wondering why no lever mechanically moves this thing from your video.