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My cousin brought a MTD snow blower to me. He said he got it with no compression. The engine has the number 270-WJ. It looks like it has seen very little use. Oil looks almost new. I have never messed with a MTD engine. Not sure if there are any problems that are common to these? I was going to start with pulling the valve cover and see what the rockers look like. I did not find a parts listing for a 270-WJ a much more common engine was a 270-WU. It does not look like this engine has a compression release. I give it a pull and the engine just free spins. Anything to look for?

Free spin like you pull the rope and then it slowly starts to slow down to a stop. Indicates broken connecting rod.

Get us the model number of the snow blower and we maybe able to determine which engine it is.

OK, it had the same engine as the MTD... It is a Troy Built... Better info always helps.

I give it pull and I get a couple spins. Bad rod?? Not sure no clunking. A couple pictures follow. They have so many numbers on it. I thought he 270 WU was the engine #... Not simple like the old Briggs. Pictures follow...

# looks like a 2012... It sure does not look that old.
Not sure if this is clearer.

That is a 270-WU and serial comes back as 2016 engine. As well it is printed on the EPA sticker.

StarTech said:

That is a 270-WU

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OK, The U is printed in the W pretty close on the etched #. I see it now on the tag. Maybe best bet is to tear it apart and have a look inside. Maybe a quick look at the rockers first. Oil looks very clean.

And since you going to be tearing it down here's is the service manual.

Mtd 61, 65, 70, 75 Series Service Manual

StarTech said:

And since you going to be tearing it down here's is the service manual.

Mtd 61, 65, 70, 75 Series Service Manual

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Awesome Thanks!! I was just going to ask about the valve clearance. I pulled the plug to check the piston and it moved properly. I did a compression test and it was so low I could not read any.

I pulled the valve cover and the intake nut was hand loose on the rocker arm. ??? I spun the stud out of the head. It was VERY loose. I checked the exhaust rocker and the stud too was slightly loose. But threads in the head were fine. So was going to reinstall and check the clearance and see what happens.

Not sure if someone was in there before me?? Or if that is the problem.

Someone was in there before. Adjusting valves did nothing. I decided to tear it apart.


Yes, that is a spray straw.

Well that is a first for me to see. But as I always say there is a first time for everything and nothing is impossible. It also points to a possible starting problem once you get it back together.

Many years ago I had numerous new electronic desktop calculators adding wrong. The OEM say it was impossible so had to prove it to them with a set of serial number and test set of numbers. When I had the info I got a tech support guy to pull an unit withing that serial range and had over the phone enter my test number set. Sure enough he got the same wrong answers. Well it cause me to change nearly 100 cpu chips once they found the programming error. The company that I work was one of a few that received the bulk of those bad cpu chips.

Another time the boss had shut down a computer during EOM operations and didn't tell me or anybody else. We discovered the results three weeks later when the system lost three weeks of data during the normal EOM. What was strange the system showed data before the EOM but it was no in the regular data files. We hunted and a hunted for it. We final just had accept that the data was lost and the accounting then had spend the next two months re-enterng all the lost data while still doing normal day to day operations. Those three weeks of backups were of bad data.

If he had only told us the next morning after he did the shut down ie pulled the plug. We could saved him two months of overtime for four accountants plus multiple trips to Birmingham and my overtime plus my frayed nerves.

StarTech said:

It also points to a possible starting problem once you get it back together.

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Yes, back to the original problem. Most likely dirty carb, and since it is off already...

Just an FYI it fired right up. Carburetor did not look to bad either. Thx for the help.

Believe it or not I’ve seen it and many other thing holding valves open. I think the weirdest one is a small machine screw, about 10 X 28X 1/4” holding the exhaust valve open. Have no idea how it got passed the intake valve and into the exhaust port with the screw head against the valve face, threads pointing toward the cylinder. Glad to hear you got it running.

Good to hear you got it going.
Another weird one I could not believe.
I received a free old model Horse tiller with the later model Tecumseh engine with no carb on the engine. It had the 2-3 inch intake manifold steel pipe still attached to the head.
Sometime later I gently pulled on the start rope and no compression. Motor oil was very clean. I pulled the spark plug and slowly pulled the rope and a piece of white plastic appeared in the spark plug hole. I started pulling on the piece of plastic with needle nose pliers as I slowly turned the engine and it just kept coming. A large white kitchen trash bag was finally fed out. The engine then cranked with compression and I gave it a prime into the head and the engine promised to run.
Later installed a old used Tecumseh carb and got a good run.
The head had never been off of the engine. Someone had stuck/stuffed the plastic bag into the manifold pipe to keep insects out and it got sucked into the cylinder as the engine cranked.

remove plug, does it spin. do valves go up and down when turning over engine?

BrianSki said:

My cousin brought a MTD snow blower to me. He said he got it with no compression. The engine has the number 270-WJ. It looks like it has seen very little use. Oil looks almost new. I have never messed with a MTD engine. Not sure if there are any problems that are common to these? I was going to start with pulling the valve cover and see what the rockers look like. I did not find a parts listing for a 270-WJ a much more common engine was a 270-WU. It does not look like this engine has a compression release. I give it a pull and the engine just free spins. Anything to look for?

Click to expand...

I haven't read the whole thread but of course the first thing you do is to remove the spark plug and look inside to see if the piston is going up and down.. I haven't seen any of these engines with any internal catastrophic failures but it's always possible.
If the piston is going up and down then you should pop off the valve cover and you'll probably find something up with the valves.
You can usually fix whatever needs to be fixed without replacing the head but these heads are pretty readily available from what I have found and pretty easy to bolt on.

BrianSki said:

Just an FYI it fired right up. Carburetor did not look to bad either. Thx for the help.

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Cool, upon jumping to the latest I see you found the straw and they're holding the valve open and everything is good to go now. Congratulations. It's a shame you had to take the head off but oh well it still will be a good machine for you.