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My old man honed a 31hp B&S Vanguard motor and needs to get 20 over pistons. All I've found online is the B&S brand stuff which is $170 a pop without rings or anything else.

Does anyone know of brands that would sell cheaper pistons and rings than that? He can find standard size rebuilt kits for a good price, but they do not have 20 over sizes for the kits.

The motor is a 543477 0116-E1 04051412 and it looks like the OEM piston number for 20 over is 841931. I tried searching by that number on some sites but nothing but oem comes up, I can't find cross referenced cheaper stuff.

Thanks!

new: https://www.briggsstrattonstore.com/841931-Briggs-and-Stratton-Piston-Assy-020-OEM/

The aftermarket supply line comes from 2 sources
Companies who supply the OEM part often also supply excess into the aftermarket stream and the same for companies that used to suply OEM
Others who make the same type of product for different assemblers and see an oppertunity in an undersupplied market ..
In both cases the part manufacturer will only market the product if there is sufficent demand for it .
The price of new engines is so low that most are considered throw away items in prosperous Western countries .
As such there is next to no market for original pistons let alone after market pistons .
A sad state of affairs and a prime example why the planet is rapidly heading towards the extinction of humans .
Up until B & S going bust they were making enough money from new engine sales to be able to retail replacements parts at cost .
This made them popular for the end users so the demand was high and the slim profit margins were fine .
Now that their new engin sales have plumeted to less than 1/2 of what they were in 2000 the new engine profit is not enough to subsidise the parts side of the business.
Thus for the past 5 years B & S parts have started to reflect the true price of a mssive parts inventory .
On top of that 2 bankruptcies hane cost their suppliers a lot of money so many of them no longer supply B & S or if they do it in on COD basis at a higher price in order to recoup the money they never got paid .
Thus the prices are soaring.
Since WWII we ( and I include Australians in this we ) have been brainwashed on a daily basis that the superior capatilist demand economy will produce every thing we want , when we want it at a price we can afford , and to a large extent we took the bait , hook line & sinker

So a long answer for your question but in short no demand = no supply
Short supply = high prices
And B&S is in a desperate fight for it's survival which it is loosing which is why they are expanding the logistics side and distributing more of other peoples products rather than making their own
You might find some OS pistons retailed by the companies who specialize in copetition engines but they are likely to be machined from forged blanks which are even more expensive

I have Never bored or then honed a cylinder with OUT 1st, having the piston(s) in hand to hone to final size.

There's really not a huge aftermarket for "oversize" items for rebuilds. It usually comes out close to, or more, as a new engine. $ wise.
looks like your stuck with OEM.

And the Briggs pistons do come with rings per the IPL drawing. Now of pricing vary base where the OP is located due to exchange rates. But in the US the price is around $135 + shipping. Purchasing locally will cost more as Briggs dealers generally don't get much more 10% on parts and when shipping is added the parts cost more per item than online sources which get larger discounts from Briggs. The smaller shop get punished for being small but we provide normally more one on one service but we do need to make a profit to stay in business.

StarTech said:

And the Briggs pistons do come with rings per the IPL drawing. Now of pricing vary base where the OP is located due to exchange rates. But in the US the price is around $135 + shipping. Purchasing locally will cost more as Briggs dealers generally don't get much more 10% on parts and when shipping is added the parts cost more per item than online sources which get larger discounts from Briggs. The smaller shop get punished for being small but we provide normally more one on one service but we do need to make a profit to stay in business.

Click to expand...

If you only make 10% gross on B & S parts sales, there is no point in selling them, way too low.

If I go by the price files my vendors supply there worst profit margins like on MTD parts as low 2.5% GPM. One vendor charges 2.5% surcharge if I pay by credit card. This is why I have rework the files every to increase my retail prices as I do give my senior customers a 10% discount. (basically knocking off the 9.5% sales tax). I have keep in mind many these customers do check online prices too and try lever me into those prices.

The vendor that 2.5% I refuse to purchase from them until they switch me over to bank draft. It took 7 months but I finally got their attention when the $4000 a year purchases drop the under $400. Another vendor simply demand me to buy a certain amount of parts no matter if I needed them or not. They keep threatening to drop but I dropped them instead.

As you said there is no point is selling when there is no profit to be made.

StarTech said:

And the Briggs pistons do come with rings per the IPL drawing. Now of pricing vary base where the OP is located due to exchange rates. But in the US the price is around $135 + shipping. Purchasing locally will cost more as Briggs dealers generally don't get much more 10% on parts and when shipping is added the parts cost more per item than online sources which get larger discounts from Briggs. The smaller shop get punished for being small but we provide normally more one on one service but we do need to make a profit to stay in business.

Click to expand...

Looks like list is $144.99 and my cost is $115.99, so 20% Trade account would get 10% and the Briggs store is selling for $133.77 so a trade account would make about $3.

boring a cylinder, especially on an air cooled engine is not a DIY job. I did it for a living for many years. air cooled cylinders flex more than engines with a water jacket, and it takes a lot of practice and special tools to get the right dimension, and keep the bore straight. One needs the pistons to get the final bore size clearance right. Let's say the old piston wore the cylinder .004" over size - and someone decided to over size it. If the new piston is .001" too small, and the new bore is .002" too big because one couldn't control the quality of the boring, measuring gauges etc., and someone made an incorrect guess on clearance for that engine by .001" too much, then it is already a worn out engine with .004" oversize before assembling. My guess is that if one is going to ,020" oversize it is because broken rings gouged the heck out of the cylinder or a rod broke.

In a previous century I had a machine shop 010 over some engines when it was cost efficient. The best I will do now is use a flex ball hone to deglaze a cylinder and install new rings. If I don't have the correct hone I add the price of the hone into the job. Haven't done any in the last few years.

bertsmobile1 said:

The aftermarket supply line comes from 2 sources
Companies who supply the OEM part often also supply excess into the aftermarket stream and the same for companies that used to suply OEM
Others who make the same type of product for different assemblers and see an oppertunity in an undersupplied market ..
In both cases the part manufacturer will only market the product if there is sufficent demand for it .
The price of new engines is so low that most are considered throw away items in prosperous Western countries .
As such there is next to no market for original pistons let alone after market pistons .
A sad state of affairs and a prime example why the planet is rapidly heading towards the extinction of humans .
Up until B & S going bust they were making enough money from new engine sales to be able to retail replacements parts at cost .
This made them popular for the end users so the demand was high and the slim profit margins were fine .
Now that their new engin sales have plumeted to less than 1/2 of what they were in 2000 the new engine profit is not enough to subsidise the parts side of the business.
Thus for the past 5 years B & S parts have started to reflect the true price of a mssive parts inventory .
On top of that 2 bankruptcies hane cost their suppliers a lot of money so many of them no longer supply B & S or if they do it in on COD basis at a higher price in order to recoup the money they never got paid .
Thus the prices are soaring.
Since WWII we ( and I include Australians in this we ) have been brainwashed on a daily basis that the superior capatilist demand economy will produce every thing we want , when we want it at a price we can afford , and to a large extent we took the bait , hook line & sinker

So a long answer for your question but in short no demand = no supply
Short supply = high prices
And B&S is in a desperate fight for it's survival which it is loosing which is why they are expanding the logistics side and distributing more of other peoples products rather than making their own
You might find some OS pistons retailed by the companies who specialize in copetition engines but they are likely to be machined from forged blanks which are even more expensive

Click to expand...

I don’t think that anyone promised my generation that capitalism would produce televisions in every shade of the rainbow and repair parts until doomsday. Capitalism does work though, the proof being that all the other systems that nations have tried aren’t any better at producing mower parts, or clean water, or decent cars or jet planes that don’t crash into mountains. I’d much rather be hunting down B&S parts than trying a Soviet lawnmower run. Ever seen these guys work on a LADA? I rest my case.

The problem with capitalism is it is very wasteful of resources because of the asumption of endless supplies of everything
IT also assumes that consumers and producers are equal and there is a limitled supply of both.
Then there is the assumption that "The market is informed "
Tried to wade through phone contracts or decide which bank to use ?
So it can work well if there is a good , strong referee that used to be the government, but that does not happen now days
Socialism works well if the government is both strong and fair but again that does not happen either
Both systems would work well if they were run by computers that can not be corrupted or swayed by offers of apartments in Miami or bags of cash .
And while you are sort of correct about Lada's, they are quite easy to work on get great fuel economy but suffer much in the area of creature comforts.
I have a Russian friend who drives nothing but Ladas, all of which are now pushing 40 years old .
The counter arguement to that is ever tried to have an operation in New York without having to sell you house & bankrupt your family ?
A photographer ex-customer of a different business was running a tourist business out of New York for his pregnant friends.
They could fly to Australia have a 2 month holiday , have the baby, spend 2 weeks post birth here then fly back to New York for less than the cost of giving birth in any New York hospital .
More veterans die in the USA because they can not afford medical treatment than have died on the battlefirlds
Eventually Medibank cotton on to what he was doing & I think either they or immigration closed down him down.

The planet is now suffereig from uncontrolled rampant capitalism on one side wasting massive resources to generate land fill .
And on the other side polluters are allowed to pollute unchecked because of lax environmental laws

We got away with it for 50 years but now it is coming back to bite us on the bum

Expect a lot more tornadoes and hurricanes and ecah year you will be hearing that the storms that year have eclipsed all previous records .
Every year there is record floods ( Pakistan this year, Germany last year, Australia last year ) some where and record droughts elsewhere

I was a political science major at one time. No political or economic system is fair, equal or impervious to defects. That said, whenever there is an imbalance of money, or power, life can get crappy. The problem now is too many humans. It is impossible to feed the world without damaging it. Just read the news a minute ago and 18,000 cattle are dead in Texas from their farts. The machine that collects them had a fart of its own,

Yes no aruement from that
Apparently the population problem will be self correcting .
Seamen levels & strength in Western countries is decliningat the rate of knotts according to a UK lecture I listend to last week
So while all of the reseach has been done on the woman , the actual problem is with the men.
Now we come to the problem.
Walmart, Lowes , ford , Microsoft etc etc et need an ever increasing population to fund the ever increasing demand to fund ever increasing profits to enable ever increasing dividends
Any system that requires fresh money to pay out early investors is called a Ponzie scheme
So requireing more young tax payers to fund the retirement of fewer aged people is a Ponzie scheme
Add to that the planets resources are not infinite
There was a lecture a couple ofyears ago during the Covid fiasco about sustainability.
One of the bits that amused ( but was still true ) was toilet paper.
Aussies use more toilet paper perhead of population than any other country on the planet ( so we really must be full of ____ )
If China used toilet paper at the same rate and if it was all made from virgin paper ( and most of it is ) every tree on the planet would need to be felled within 3 year just to make toilet paper .
Add India to that and it goes down to just over 1 year.
We never think of toilet paper as a pollutant or even a single use item that is putting an heavy load on the planet.

As for population numbers yes you are correct but who is going to volunteer to be knocked off ?
And the only country that has done anything to slow this down is China with their one child policy which we in the West condemmed as being inhumane ( and the way it was enforced was )
Even worse is the USA's foreign aid programe that refuses to allow US foreign aid to be used for contraception let alone the idiot anti-abortion laws
Now I can understand the churches objections as fewer people = fewer in the pews putting their tythes in the collection plate.
What I find amazing is all of the churches were enthusaistic supportes of Eugenics where abortions were very frequent done on women against their will and followed by forced sterilizations.
So obviously the churches only want people that they can fleece .
Nothing can expand forever and this includes economies .
Worst than that is inflation is a man made entity designed purely and simply to ensure the assets of the asset rich retain their value over time and hopefully increase.
In the USA's situation it is needed to allow the government to pay back their massive debt

StarTech said:

If I go by the price files my vendors supply there worst profit margins like on MTD parts as low 2.5% GPM. One vendor charges 2.5% surcharge if I pay by credit card. This is why I have rework the files every to increase my retail prices as I do give my senior customers a 10% discount. (basically knocking off the 9.5% sales tax). I have keep in mind many these customers do check online prices too and try lever me into those prices.

The vendor that 2.5% I refuse to purchase from them until they switch me over to bank draft. It took 7 months but I finally got their attention when the $4000 a year purchases drop the under $400. Another vendor simply demand me to buy a certain amount of parts no matter if I needed them or not. They keep threatening to drop but I dropped them instead.

As you said there is no point is selling when there is no profit to be made.

Click to expand...

Logically .