The Kohler that shouldn't run (but does )

[gman4dx266]

Hello everyone. So I wanted to share my latest project because I think you guys will get a kick out of it. I bought this Cub Cadet LTX1045 for $200 this past weekend. It was for sale for parts. Owner said the engine started knocking bad and he shut it down before it made the big bang. Mower has only 34hrs on it, and looks like it too.

I brought it home and even cranking with the starter you hear something hitting. Initial inspection of the outside didn't reveal any cracks so I popped the top off to look inside. It was very apparent once I saw inside - the cast aluminum link that connects the crankshaft to the counterweight blew apart. It appeared the bolts backed out and it slung it into something else. These things are bad about bolts coming loose anyways. The bottom weight link had both bolts only finger tight so I'm pretty sure that was the root cause. It exploded the governor too.

So as luck would have it, people want an arm and leg for parts for the courage engines because they're so failure prone. I had another motor behind the house I could have put on here but I decided to see what I could do with this one first.

I took all the counterbalance weight stuff out and ran the motor. It ran decent at mid to high rpm but vibrated pretty bad at lower rpm. At that point, I pulled the crank and the piston out and set it all up to find how much it needed to balance it. It came out to 363 grams to balance the rotating assembly. I had small cut off pieces of plate so I weighed them as close as I could get and welded them on to the crank opposite the piston, where normal bob-weights would be on any other crankshaft. I ended up having to do some test fitment and minor trimming to get it to clear the bottom of the cylinder and the intake camshaft, so I am probably still a little on the light side as far as the amount of weight it should have. Tossed a new cover gasket and governor in it, loctited all the bolts and filled it up with oil. Then I mowed my back yard! Watch it last forever now LOL I wish I could post the video of it running.

 

[StarTech]

All I can say is that I would get sued if I did that to one my customer's engines.

 

[gman4dx266]

All I can say is that I would get sued if I did that to one my customer's engines.

Probably, good thing it's my own!

 

[bertsmobile1]

Engine balance is a black art
If I was to do it then it would have dynamically balanced to 0 primary vibrations at 4000 rpm
But if it worked for you well good for you but post back in 2 years time with an update.
These motors are made as cheap as possible because the ignorant & greedy mower market will not pay for a quality product .
If all that was required was a simple counterweight on the crank then Kohler & Briggs would do just that as the balanced cranks would be substantially cheaper than the recriprocating counter balance that both fit .

And the throw away line about Courages is rubbish.
They are no more failure prone than any other domestic level engine .
When the Kohler Crack reared its ugly head, Husqvarna did what a lot of USA companies do, they dumped as much of the potentially faulty stock as they could on other countries, in particular Australia & New Zealand .
Thus we got the kohler powered Husqvarnas really cheap and around 1/3 of my customers have them , because at the time the dumped Husqvarnas were a lot cheaper than anything else on the market
Funny enough I see no more failure rate on them than on the inteks
In fact the most regular repair I do is intek head gaskets, at about 4 times the rate of any other repair
Next comes the 31 series cam shafts with dud ACR mechanisms or loose lobes
Next are side valve B & S engines with loose counterweights ( although these are all high hour engines )
Next are intecks with low oil seizures
Then come Kohlers with failed ACR's ( about 1 every year or two ) and down here we mow about 40 times a year as the weather is fairly similar to California .

Kohler parts are not as cheap ( or nasty ) as Briggs parts. Their price is on par with Kawasaki parts and both are slightly less expensive than Honda parts .
When you have been in manufacturing for a while you can identify parts that are made to the cheapest possible price

 

[EatPreyMow]

I have a 220 hour 2009 Kohler Courage powered Cub Cadet that's still going strong. What saved it is I loctited and retorqued the crankcase cover bolts in 2011, otherwise it would have self destructed in 2012 or so.

I love it. Smooth, fairly fuel efficient, and plenty of torque. I've tried a few Briggs powered mowers and they vibrated terribly compared to my Kohler, it was like riding a giant gas powered dodil. Odd how Kohler spent enough to manufacture a well balanced engine but flubed the assembly process.