Repowering an old Snapper

[buddyb]

Has anyone repowered an old RER Snapper with one of the Chinese Honda Clones? From what I understand Toro and Exmark are putting them on their new mowers,so they must be pretty good engines. They should be more powerful,smoother and more fuel efficient than my old 40 year old Briggs.

 

[tom3]

Son has put one on his Troybilt tiller and another on a Go-Kart. They start right up, run smooth, pretty quiet, very powerful, so far so good. The mounting seems to be pretty standard for the Briggs/Tecumseh engine replacement. Sure can't beat the price with discounts, he paid $89 for each of his at HF with timing the sales just right.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Has anyone repowered an old RER Snapper with one of the Chinese Honda Clones? From what I understand Toro and Exmark are putting them on their new mowers,so they must be pretty good engines. They should be more powerful,smoother and more fuel efficient than my old 40 year old Briggs.

Yes & No.
The new engines will have more power per cc and use a lot less fuel.
It will vibrate more than your Briggs because it has a lot lighter flywheels .
Big heavy flywheels = smooth power delivery but slower acceleration.
Toro & Exmark are using Loncin engines.
Loncin are an older Chinese company and can make good engines.
However like just about all Chinese companies, there is no such thing as a production line defective engine.
It is up to the wholesaler to provide quality control and weed out the bad ones.
So where do the engines that Toro reject go ? not to the tip or scrap yard that is for sure.
Lifan is another maker of Honda based engines and they are no 3 volume wise in the world and probably will overtake Briggs in the next year or so.
Most of their engines go into small motorcycles but they do a range of stationary engines as well.
Ducar is China's no 3 engine maker, they do only stationary engines & to my mind are the pick of the crop.
They are also the most expensive engines out of China.

After that there are hundreds if not thousands of small companies that assemble engines from bought in parts to order.
Some of these are good but some are made from reject parts and would be lucky to outlast warranty period if they are never used.
We don't get them down here because we have a manditory minimum 12 month warranty period & if the makes will not honour it the retailer must.

 

[Fish]

They should be more powerful,smoother and more fuel efficient than my old 40 year old Briggs.

That is funny right there....
They will last 2-3 years if you are REAL lucky...

 

[buddyb]

They should be more powerful,smoother and more fuel efficient than my old 40 year old Briggs.

That is funny right there....
They will last 2-3 years if you are REAL lucky...

I am not sure that would be the case.I have a couple of the smaller engines I have worked pretty hard,one of them the last 10 years and they are holding up better than expected.First of the season one or two pulls and they are ready to go to work.