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Near enough decided to buy a Husqvarna ride on mower fitted with BS series 7 Intek 40R577 engine. Are these engines suitable and up to the job? Any well kinown problems or tips on them/

Regards

Try including the model number and year of the Husky. Maybe that will motivate someone. I have a Husqy with a 44 series , a 48" rider with a locking differential The "4xx" may indicate part of the endurance engine series and as such supposedly a cut above the basic Intek V like the other big box unit I have and which runs too hot.

Model is R 124TC this years 2017. Is not an endurance model. One big plus over the BS on my current mower is that at least this has an oil filter. Whoever designed an engine without a filter!

Not so long ago, oil filters were optional on cars. Unheard of on small air cooled engines because they were splash lubricated and didn't have an oil pump to pump oil through a filter.

I like the briggs myself. I usually choose the series 8 engines because of the oil cooler option, but I'm not sure that really gains it any further longevity than the Intek. The Intek has a better air filter setup due to the pre-filter, imo. That engine has the cast iron sleeves, it should hold up to whatever you will throw at it. Just change your oil in accordance with the manual recommendation and try to find non ethanol fuel locally and your good to go.

Bogart said:

Model is R 124TC this years 2017. Is not an endurance model. One big plus over the BS on my current mower is that at least this has an oil filter. Whoever designed an engine without a filter!

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I used to think that way myself but having been a service tech for the past few years has really changed my mind.
I see 40 year old side bangers running quite fine with little evidence of excessive wear, provided the owners actually changed the oil.
Considering that most mowers are seasonal and most owners change their oil at the end of the season, not because the oil is worn out but to avoid the problems of the engine sitting there with dirty ACID oil in the engine and no oil filter will pull out acid by products.
If any modification is needed to the oil system, it is an low oil shutdown because low oil damage out numbers dirty oil damage 100:1 on the mowers coming through my gate.

Next the market gets what the market will pay for and the market wants cheap not good and to be honest the average desk pilot mower buyer would be hard put to work out what was and was not a good mower or a good feature of a mower engine.
Mower engines are under very little stress, just think about it.
Your 400 cc engine is putting out a whopping 17 Hp
A motorcycle engine of the same capacity is putting out 70 Hp

Thanks for the replies guys all very relevant. Ethanol free not available here but E5 is common.

A lot of Briggs engine are still splash lube even with the oil pump and filter. Or at least partial splash lube.

One thing that does not seem to have improved over the old engine is the position of the oil drain plug. I can see again when removing the plug lots of oil going over the mower chassis. Why not just extend it by a couple of inches to clear the chassis, well a couple of inches would make the difference on the Husqvarna.

Bogart said:

One thing that does not seem to have improved over the old engine is the position of the oil drain plug. I can see again when removing the plug lots of oil going over the mower chassis. Why not just extend it by a couple of inches to clear the chassis, well a couple of inches would make the difference on the Husqvarna.

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They are optional extras several different systems but the flex hose is becoming really popular.
What I want to see is all oil filters hanging down so they can be changed cleanly.

Bogart said:

One thing that does not seem to have improved over the old engine is the position of the oil drain plug. I can see again when removing the plug lots of oil going over the mower chassis. Why not just extend it by a couple of inches to clear the chassis, well a couple of inches would make the difference on the Husqvarna.

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The extended oil drain or quick drain systems, at least here in the USA are not supplied by the engine manufacturer, They are added by the mower manufacturer, and in some cases the just try to save a penny, and sometimes don't use anything past the factory engine drain plug. Oil everywhere is the norm, and if the customer wants it different then they pay for it after purchase. Some of the easy drain systems are not that good of quality, and have one in the shop right now that unscrewed from the block while running.

ILENGINE said:

A lot of Briggs engine are still splash lube even with the oil pump and filter. Or at least partial splash lube.

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All 4-cycle engines are at least 'partial' splash lube. Cam lobes, solid lifters, and valve stems come to mind.

But there has to be a source of oil pressure for a filter to work. What would that be on a splash lube engine with no oil pump?

cpurvis said:

All 4-cycle engines are at least 'partial' splash lube. Cam lobes, solid lifters, and valve stems come to mind.

But there has to be a source of oil pressure for a filter to work. What would that be on a splash lube engine with no oil pump?

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The intek engines use an oil pump with a filter on some engines that only pressure lubes the lower crankshaft bearing. Some have crossdrilling in the crank shaft to pressure lube all crankshaft bearings. All other bearings in the lower end are splash lube by the oil slinger on governor gear. Some versions of it had an oil pump through an oil filter that just dumped the oil back into the sump filtered. You don't get into the full pressure lube engines with pressure crankshaft, and camshaft bearings until you get into the Vanguard engines.

ILENGINE said:

Some versions of it had an oil pump through an oil filter that just dumped the oil back into the sump filtered.

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Those are called bypass filters. They did the same job (cleaning the oil) as a full-flow filtering system but without the guarantee that the just-filtered oil was going to the engine. Of course, you don't really have that on a full-flow system, either, because there has to be a bypass to allow unfiltered oil to get to the engine in case the filter gets too dirty to allow 'full' flow.

I had a bypass filter on a truck with a Caterpillar diesel engine. It was centrifugal and was driven by oil pressure and spun at something like 6,000 rpm. It would still be spinning several minutes after the truck was shut off. I can't remember the manufacturer but their claim was that you could double the oil change interval, which I never did.

bertsmobile1 said:

They are optional extras several different systems but the flex hose is becoming really popular.
What I want to see is all oil filters hanging down so they can be changed cleanly.

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Good point but you are forgetting the people who design things do not necessarily use them.

Our 60 plus year old Wisconsin AKN seems quit happy with no filter. As for B&S engines, when wondering if the impressive designation really is better than the std., check the parts list for each. Most of the time you will find both engines you are questioning use the same parts.

Walt Conner

You are probably correct in most cases. Having an oil filter can do nothing else but help assuming it is changed regularly.

Tinkerer200 said:

Our 60 plus year old Wisconsin AKN seems quit happy with no filter. As for B&S engines, when wondering if the impressive designation really is better than the std., check the parts list for each. Most of the time you will find both engines you are questioning use the same parts.

Walt Conner

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With computer aided assembly now days usually the higher spec engine gets assembled with closer fitting parts and the run of the mill gets them as they come in.
I am sure you remember all the funny little fit marks you used to find all over the place.
As for filters, never were and never will be a substitute for fresh oil.
When I started to resell B & S engines I learned very quickly the difference between "spin on oil filter" & "pressure fed lubrication" and "full pressure fed lubrication"
No one gave a wrinkled rats rectum about the latter two but they fought over oil filters.
None of my personal use or loan out mowers have filters and all are doing quite well.
Some of them date back as far as 1969 and he only thing I have done to them is to fit a hall effect trigger to replace the points.