What should I replace my Kohler Courage 25 twin with????

[VegetiveSteam]

As some one with an engineering back ground I have a lot of admiration for the Courage singles, a brilliant design that suffered badly from a modification to make it cheaper but mainly from non mantiance amplified by bigotry and ignorance
So yes the ACR's can fail, as do the ones on the Inteks but at a much lower rate and after a while Kohler fixed that
OTOH replacing a failed cam is a 45 minute job done with the mower in the engine
Replacing the cam on an Intek is a 4 hour job if you are lucky, engine out of mower
If the blower housing came off every season to clean the fins then the owners of the few that loosen to closure plate bolts should have seen this & tightened them
However I have had more than one come in "making a funny noise " or "cranks slow " where the heads of 2 or 3 bolts had been completely ground off by the flywheel
And nearly all of these needed nothing more than a new bolt or 2 and a drop of loctite to be as good as new .
I have welded 3 engines where they did crack but these were all high high hour machines.
When the crack manifested itself Husqvarna dumped thousands of mowers they pulled off the US market down here in OZ heavily discounted
I have 22 courages that are sequential & all have the same engine serial so they were all from the same batch
Only 1 of these developed the crack.
The final "flaw" is Kohler engineers failed to appreciate just how lazy, cheap & stupid Americans are
Thus You tube is chockers with videos on how to fix the leaky rocker cover gasket .
How do you fix it ?
Easy
Shove your power driver up some where that will give you the least nutritional benefit and perhaps the most pleasure.
Do the nuts up with your fingers and only to the correct torque.
A new gasket every time and it will not leak
Done up with a power driver the nut gets over tightened which cuts the gasket so it leaks and double this if you reuse an old chopped up one with a sliver of silicon over the top .
The said same "highly flawed total junk" engine is made in the tens of thousands by Kohler China and is the backbone of the EU & Asia where owners are obviously more intelligent than the average US idiot .
BEcaus of the dumping of models in OZ by Husqvarna I have far more Kohler engines in my service run than any other brand yet my biggest engine failure by far is head gaskets in Inteks which is generally around the 5 to 10 mark every season
The second biggest engine failure is broken ACR's on inteks which is running at 2 to 3 a season

Just curious here. Are you saying the Courage single is or was (it hasn't been built since 2018) built in China?

 

[bertsmobile1]

Just curious here. Are you saying the Courage single is or was (it hasn't been built since 2018) built in China?

No
I am saying that we get mowers down here with new series Kohler Courage engines that are made in the PRC
The new engines do not have the word "courage" on them but they are the same engine in 16, 18, 20 & 22 Hp ratings .
Generally fitted to cheapie ride ons based on the LTH or YTH Husqvarnas selling for $ 2000 to $ 4000 (AUS )
Very thin metal with very thick paint .
Engines have EU pollution stickers on them not USA ones and generally have serial numbers electro etched in the block .
So not the same as a USA built Courage .

 

[Tiger Small Engine]

I would agree. At this point trying to rebuild this engine, if it indeed has failed as described, would not be the way to go. Your engine failed so my opinion really doesn’t help your issue, but I would have to strongly disagree with your mechanic’s assessment of the Kohler Courage Twin cylinder engine.

The problem for the Courage Twin Cylinder engine is it shared its name with the Courage Single cylinder engine which was without a doubt not Kohler’s best work. But’s it also why Kohler took care of failed Courage Single Cylinder engines far outside of their warranty period. Many years after in fact.

Like I said, yours failed so this really won’t mean much to you, but the Courage Twin Cylinder engine was a good engine. It wasn’t without a few nuisance issues when it first came out, but it was not known for major failures.

I’ll admit I am somewhat biased as I represented Kohler for 27 years, but I also have nothing to gain from defending them. Like I mentioned before, the Courage Single Cylinder engine gave Courage a bad name and too many simply hear the word Courage and regardless of whether it’s a single or a twin cylinder it gets tagged as junk and nothing could be further from the truth for the twin.

Whether it's a Kohler, Briggs, Kawasaki or Honda, if an engine runs from brand new for an hour without issue, and then has a catastrophic failure at 300 hours it is rarely the fault of the engine.

I will step down from my soapbox now.

VegetiveSteam-
Since you represented Kohler for 27 years, can you tell us your job? Sales/marketing, technical advisor, mechanic, engineering, product development, manufacturing, management? The reason I ask is because it sounds like you may have a wealth of knowledge about Kohler in particular. I am a Kohler engine fan, just not the Kohler Courage single specifically.

 

[VegetiveSteam]

VegetiveSteam-
Since you represented Kohler for 27 years, can you tell us your job? Sales/marketing, technical advisor, mechanic, engineering, product development, manufacturing, management? The reason I ask is because it sounds like you may have a wealth of knowledge about Kohler in particular. I am a Kohler engine fan, just not the Kohler Courage single specifically.

Technical service and education. Which included training new Kohler technicians, answering technical calls and approving or unfortunately sometimes denying warranties.