Norm, I have seen a 450e completely stuffed after the first mow - spewing oil out the breather and thick smoke when revved up - left it running for 10 minutes, no improvement.
Oil level was perfect - it went back to the shop and got exchanged
AVB, maybe Briggs send all their rejects to 'the colonies' haha
If they do then it is NOT very good business.
Now it may be just me but Quality is still a standard I go by in my repairs. I have however seen the quality of equipment on the market now that is of much less quality then in the past. I repair engines from the 1960's that are going strong where engine from the first decade of this century are either on the last leg or already dead.
I had work for a Foutune 500 company that their equipment division managers came in and told us Field Techs in the mid 2000's that if a machine was 5 years old we were to kill it off in favor of selling a new machine even if the equipment was in good condition. I couldn't bring myself to do this so I left their employment. I now seeing times where equipment that is only a year or two old having parts not available as soon as they stop producing a model they destroy the machinery that was used to produce the parts.
To me it seems everyone is taking the Chinese throw away attitude. And even the parts are available they are made too costly. For example it the handheld leaf blower I kill last Saturday that it needed was a PNC instead having this available MTD was only willing to sale a shortblock at the dealer cost of new machine and by the time I added an hour of labor charge for a four hour repair it would have as much as the retail price of a new one. Well I went and parted it out along checking the prices of various items. They were attempting to sell replacement screws for 3 usd a piece. No wonder I save every screw I can reclaim items like these. IF I had to buy all the screws alone it would have costed over 40 usd for a 99 usd blower.
