OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Tech Talk GV150 tuneup help needed

This is the beast Honda all together . I will take the GV for a mow tmrw if it will start. After a run I'll take the top off and inspect the seal.


Thanks grumpy . I will get back to you after test.

If there's any doubt about it starting, roebuck, it sounds as if there is more work to do after the oil seal is sorted out. A side-valve Honda should start within two pulls, even if it has been standing for quite a while. (An OHV Honda should start first pull.) Anyway, let's get to the bottom of the oil seal issue first.

You posted a picture of a used oil seal laying on part of your engine. I doubt it is one of the an actual seals you had fitted to that engine, but we can use it to discuss one possible explanation of why your seals have been leaking. Here is the picture:


That seal seems to have had some spectacularly bad experiences. The red oval shows mangling of the garter spring, and heavy damage to the main seal lip. The yellow oval shows the imprint where the garter spring has been stretched out of position and pressed very hard against the web of the rubber part of the seal. All that probably happened when the seal was extracted from whatever engine it was in. However it illustrates what can happen under some circumstances, if you press a seal way too deeply into the bore it mounts in, so the inner ring of the ball race contacts the rubber part of the seal and then deforms it, so its sealing lip is not in contact with the shaft.

That malfunction is only possible in cases where two conditions apply. Firstly, the seal must be open on the oil side, like your GV150 seals, instead of having a double steel housing, like the one I showed in section in the diagram with the green arrow. Secondly, the seal has to be pressed into a smaller bore than the ball race.

Often an oil seal is in the same bore as the ball race. There is then not much of a problem with even an open-sided seal being pressed in too far, because the steel housing of the seal will hit the outer ring of the ball race, limiting how far you can press it in and preventing lip contact with the inner ring of the ball race. However when the bore the oil seal is pressed into is smaller, an open-sided seal can be pressed in considerably further, because its steel housing will miss the outer ring of the ball race and continue moving until the steel housing hits the ball cage. By the time the housing hits the ball cage, the inner ring of the ball race may be forced a long way into the rubber part of the seal, perhaps deforming and expanding the sealing lip.

In summary, the above is one possible explanation of what went wrong with your seal installations. If that is what happened, it seems to have been caused by the wrong instructions you got from the counter jockey at your Honda dealer, when he told you to press it in to 5 mm below flush. As you know, Honda specifies 2 mm below flush, and this may have been for a very good reason.

Hi Grumpy , I've done approximately 2 hours of mowing and running the engine varying the throttle but mostly at about the 3/4 rev range and didn't miss a beat . Usually I would of only run for 10 minutes when it would flood the points then stall . I've taken the lid off and checked it for no oil ,all is good put the lid back on and started it first pull . The seal you pointed out was from a b&s and the damage was caused from extracting it. I think you hit the nail on the head and by moving the seal slightly it has cured this problem. When the diagram stated the oil seal should be 2 mm below the top ,this is what stuck in my head . I would not of fixed this problem without your instructions as I would have kept on pressing the seal in too far . I'm very grateful for your patience and knowledge and I now have a lot more of an idea on how a oil seal actually works. I love this mower and can't thank you enough for all of your advice . Fantastic forum.

Thank you for reporting back, roebuck. A detective story without a solution frustrates everyone who reads it, so your final post is the most important one in the thread.

I'll close this thread. You are welcome, of course, to start another one at any time if you have an issue for discussion. Also, if anyone needs to post to this closed thread, just send a PM to a moderator.