I told a friend I'd get it going for him............................. Dirty, carb and fuel tank had green 2 stroke oil in them. No spark to very small spark.... I puled the top off, cleaned flywheel, and coil, set flywheel air gap, and getting good spark with the electric drill starter... Just puting it back together, I waterblasted it......came up perfect, looks like new, 31 years old....... Wish it was mine............. Never seen one before... speedy
........................Keep your blades sharp......................
Hi Speedy, Nice machine, it's a Briggs and Stratton 2 stroke made by the Japanese company Komatsu Zenoa in the late 80's. Briggs never made their own 2 stroke back then but enlisted the help of another company to make them. My understanding is that due to the "recession we had to have", these became not economically viable and as such the collaboration between the 2 companies ceased. They are a brilliant little engine with heaps of power, Masport and Greenfield used the "Briggs" 2 stroke during the 88-89 era whilst Rover used the Suzuki, all in an attempt to compete with the locally made Victa 2 stroke. As a consequence of the recession they could not compete with the Aussie made Victa 2 stroke and as such they stopped using them on their mowers. Cheers, Ted
I understood that Briggs was going to continue their Suzuki two strokes but then the government tightened the emission rules and after some research they gave up on their two stroke engines.
What a crock of rubbish that article is. "accounting for less than 10 per cent of total sales", "consumers have made the choice", so for these reasons it's not economically viable redesign the Victa 2 stroke to make it emission compliant. Well the truth is since Briggs bought Victa, the 2 stroke became less available across the model range and unfortunately for the Australian consumers came with a premium price tag, compared to the mass produced US built 4 stroke option. This in turn forced the hand of the consumers to buy a 4 stroke. A very clever ploy by Briggs to do away with Labour intensive(or rather expensive) Aussie made 2 stroke. So yes, this resulted in 2 strokes accounting for 10 percent of sales. Ultimately the briggs agenda was achieved, build a cheaper inferior mower with a 5-10 year lifespan. Consumerism at it's best?, I think not.
No doubt people that know how sturdy the Victa 2 strokes were/are would agree with you bigted. On the other hand, I sometimes repair a two stroke Victa or Rover just for the fun of getting them going but I have a hard time trying to sell them. Sadly, people just don't want two strokes, except for everybody here, of course. I get, "I don't want to be mixing fuel" forgetting somehow that they already do it for their trimmers, although even that is changing with people switching to 4 stroke and battery trimmers.
Last time I was at Bunnings I had a look at their mowers. There were nearly as many battery powered mowers as there were petrol ones. I also see a growing number of electric mowers at the dump (I never see any chargers with them) and I have no idea how to repair them or even whether it's worth repairing them. I hate "change" and I get worse as I get older. If it was up to me we'd still have steam trains.
Hi Norm, I still have my trusty 2 stroke mower mowed my lawn with it yesterday. Eventually the 2 strokes i get do sell. Some people actually look for them but generally there's resistance.
