Missing oil ring????

[Johnny Reb]

Hello all. Newbie here. Has anyone ever run into a Kawasaki FR691V that was torn down for high oil consumption and found it to be missing one of the oil ring rails??? I bought this machine used from a very disgruntled Gravely customer. He states that he used the machine less than two years before it began consuming two quarts of oil to cut his yard, not very large yard either! He stated that the dealer refused to do warranty work on the machine, despite his keeping up regular scheduled maintenance at the dealership. I bought it cheap. It has an awesome amount of power, but he was right it drinks oil and lays down a smoke screen. Upon tearing down the engine I saw no rounded off bolts or other signs of previous repair attempts. What I did find was one of the oil ring rails completely missing??? Could this be a factory goof? The other ring end gap was nearly ,250 inch. Yes it has eaten much dust as these machines do because of the cheap air filtration system they have. Bore , cam, and crank are just within spec and valves check out great. I'll ring it and see what happens. Just curious if anyone else has seen this?

 

[bertsmobile1]

Yes,
You got a Monday morning special.
IF and only if the previous owner has a paper trail ( emails will do ) with the dealer then you have a small chance of a warranty repair.
At best it would be free parts .
Down here they have a 3 year warranty on them and Kawasaki while being hard is also fair with warranty claims.

IF there is no hard copy then no dice.
The filtering system is fine unless you are using a bagger .
I have several of them in my service run and the two that had excessive wear both bagged and both had not installed the air filter properly.
Most shove the elbow down too far and the filter too deep into the elbow then over tighten the thumb screws.
Having said that with a bagger the filter gets overloaded very quickly and needs replacing mid season as against cleaning the wrap & changing the filter at around 4 year cycles .

The problem with air filters on ZTR's when bagging is not restricted to the FR's.
THe Kohlers & the Briggs both clog regularly and once you have pulled those canisters out 4 or 5 times then the lip seal is toast .
A customer fixed a rubber mat between the bagger & his engine which seems to have made a big difference but the problem is the bags are very fine finlters.
They catch the clippings but allow the very fine dust to escape.
Even worse is this very fine dust is still so the engine has no problems sucking it into the induction system then choking the filter .
You don't get the same problem with a tractor style mower when bagging.

So if you bag or mulch with a closed deck, find a dead FX and pinch the filter off it or go to a specialiast filter shop & buy a Donaldson filter with enough flex tube to go from the ROPS to the carb.
Fit the filter to the ROPS where is is out of the heavy dust zone and does not hinder the blower cover removal for regular cleaning .

 

[Johnny Reb]

Thanks for the response. Previous owner just got mad and parked the unit for a couple years until I bought it from him. A nice guy really. I actually believe his story. Will seek better filter system after overhaul. In the early 70's Suzuki motorcycles would completely wear out their bores by 600 miles in my part of Arkansas. They went to the foam washable unit after a representative visited the region and saw the fine dust we have.

 

[Scrubcadet10]

You might want to check out Buddy's air box mod.

Kawaaski FR651V - FX air box conversion

Filter Minder is 136501-00408 series. Reads up to 8" H2O @ max. What other specs are you referring to ?He might be asking about matching the Filter Minder to the air cleaner element. The Filter Minder needs to correspond with the max restriction recommended by the filter element...

www.lawnmowerforum.com

 

[bertsmobile1]

Think about it for a moment.
Cars & trucks that operate in very dusty conditions fit snorkels so the engine can be fed cleaner air.
If you bag or mulch take your shirt off when you have finished shake it & watch the fine dust pour out.
The last assembler of walk behind mowers down here has been fitting snorkels to all of their engines till B & S took them over when they stopped adding them to the air boxes.
The result is obvious if you walk around my graveyard
Dozens of relatively new engines with worn out bores.