OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Engines Questions On Briggs & Stratton Engines Hard to start Intek

I haven't had much to do with the little vertical shaft Honda engines. (Most home owners around here use John Deere ride-ons or Chonda push mowers.) The clapped out GXV160 I keep running for a customer usually needs a new spark plug every few weeks to enable it to start and burns oil like anything.

Otherwise, the main problem I've noticed with the Honda GX's is they nearly all flood the sump if the fuel tap is left on and tend to burn heaps of oil when they hit 5,000 hours.

However, they are easy to start, unlike the Briggs & Stratton engines with the Vacu & Pulsa jet carbies! This is why most farmers down here went to Honda's. Why wear yourself out trying to start a Briggs when you can buy a Honda with a proper carby that will start easily!

After my little rant about these Hondas, I put one of them up on the bench to see if I could see what was going on with them as I had already fitted a new carby to this one a few months ago. I had just pushed them aside for years but thought a new carb might help. Anyway on close inspection I was able to see that the choke was only closing about half way, so with a bit of bending and pushing on the choke arm and bending another part of the throttle control out of the way the choke now fully closes and it started without aerostart. I will see if it will now start from cold in a couple of days. Fingers crossed

That's interesting. Did those engines come with Keihin carbies like the GX's?

NormK,

Chokes are something that gets overlooked by techs if they get in a rut or are inexperience in this area. As for chokes that is something that gives me problems enough that I always check when starting problem arise.

Some equipment even modified chokes vanes are needed to operate properly. Tecumseh engines here were ones that required holes to soldered or blazed up to increase choking. I right now have a generator that refuses to start when it is 40F or below that I need to pull the vane and seal one of the two holes and that one is a Nikki single barrel carburetor. I had 650 Subaru engine on UTV that I had to seal one the holes up on too.

Now it was different story on a leaf blower I work on a couple years ago. Initially I started with a bad main nozzle check valve. So I replaced the carburetor with the OEM supplied replacement (not an aftermarket). Well the carburetor flooded the engine on the very first hit. When comparing the old to new I notice quite bit in the choke vanes so I tried the old vane. I couldn't even start the engine on full choke but at least it didn't flood the engine. So when I knew I had problem with the vane I started enlarging the new vane's air bleed hole. When I got halfway between the two original hole sizes it started working perfectly. One only the customer has since was that his daughter backed over the blower. Luckily she only broke the carburetor intake mount.

Just shows that sometimes we got to modify an equipment setup to get to work as. It just like the way I got re-jet carburetors to stop them from surging even after the engine are warm up.

Like this horrid Honda I take it?

Mowerfreak, going by the spider webs on the muffler I would say very similar but earlier models and from memory they were about 148cc . I would have to check but if that is one of your mowers I could explain what I ended up doing. Another thing that put me right off the Hondas with these was that very quickly the pull start would rip its way out of the top and this was not helped by the hard starting. I cured that problem by fitting an eye bolt to the hold down stud beside the pull handle and now it has a guide to run through. Some companies spend years building a good reputation and then seem happy to trash it trying to exploit their brand name. I guess it is because the original founding members of these companies have pride in their product but once they have departed the scene the bean counters take control and pride is not in their make up, it is all about how can we make the quickest dollar

A mate of mine was given it and what does he do with it? Leaves it sitting in the open for months like other mowers he has acquired. He chooses to use a cheap Chonda powered lawnkeeper to do other people's lawns than attempt to get this going.
The person who let him have it paid about $700 new and it's not that oldand is alloy based in perfct condition. No matter how much Iwarn him to put it undercover he sys he has no room, so it is perishing slowly like his shocking Pope mower that was in excellent running condition when he found it years ago, now faded and seized from sitting in the open for years on end.

Funny thing is he is good at repairing stuff, just doesn't care about preventing problems in the first place.

Sounds like old mate has a bad blind spot there!

But I've struck the same thing in the past too; one small engine mech who worked in our family OPE business was much the same.

Brilliant at small engine, farm machinery and milking machine diagnostics and repairs. But treated his own gear like Poo, especially his car!

That is good information Norm. I had a Honda motor with OHC on a water pump and had the same problem. All of a sudden it became very hard to start, even though there was a good spark. After a few months went by it would not start at all. I gave up on it in the end and sold it off for spare parts. I suspect my motor may have had the same problem that you described.

Yep, my mate doesn't take care of his cars at all but has managed to do some major repairs when needed just to get it back on the road. Changes from reverse to drive and vice versa while still rolling, stuff like that.
Used to also top up his oil with discarded engine oil from the local garage, rather than use fresh oil. Doesn't do that now, thank goodness.

Vint-mow, my problem with these motors was that because they were "Hondas" I did not expect they would have had such a bad design fault built into them so I never went looking for the cause but it was blatantly obvious once I had a close look at what was happening

Sounds like one of the diary farmers near here. He will proudly tell you he's never had to change the oil on his ute, just needs topping up every so often! Mind you he drove 20km to our place with a flat tyre because he didn't have a jack! He also has a dislike for the native Blackwood trees along the gravel roads and found out the hard way that an 80hp John Deere front end loader doesn't like felling trees at high speed. He split the tractor between the engine and gearbox on the spot !!

AVB, I finally got round to testing it with the regular compression gauge. The compression is 85psi when cranked swiftly by hand.

Hmmmm. It looks like a re-badge. They're both probably re-badged chondas. Oh, the irony.