I inherited a Victa Mustang 19" push mower with a GCV160 motor. It is in good condition but i'm not sure how many hours it has on it. It was my parent's mower and only used to mow their 600m2 residential block. I don't have any experience with this motor. When I mow slightly longer grass (say 2") or damp grass I find that it bogs down and hesitates for a second before blowing a couple of puffs of black smoke and revving back up. I would have thought that it would be powerful enough to handle this kind of load easily. My old 80's model Briggs powered Rover 200ES used to do this but that seems expected and was hoping the Honda would be a big improvement. When i first got it I changed the oil and adjusted the valves as per factory specs. This quietened the motor down a bit but didn't help with the bogging/hesitation.

Is this normal for these engines? Could it be as simple as a weak governor spring or something?

Any advice appreciated.

When the time comes, i'm wondering if replacing it with a GXV160 would be the way to go. They appear to have 5hp vs 4.4hp for the GCV and are only about $100 more. Still $500 is a lot to spend on a used mower if I don't need to.

P.s. The other annoying thing with this mower is that it leaves a trail of grass clippings along the right hand side of the track. I have to overlap each run by almost half in order to pick this up in the catcher. Seems like there is some issue with the design of the deck. Guessing there isn't much I can do about this but I expected more from a mower that retails for about $1000.