Gardening SNAFU - Man Down

Tore down and assessed the engine up today. Overall it should be good with a few minor issues I will be crossing my fingers about. The crank cleaned up pretty good. Some careful emery cloth work followed by Flitz and buffing seemed to do the trick. Before After The cylinder honed out OK Except for this scoring. Very light, you can barely catch it with a fingernail. It was not using oil or smoking before so we will see what happens.

And the biggie, which I don't have a before shot of, is this damage to the bottom of the bore. It goes about a 1/4 inch up the bore and appears to be existing damage, there was blackening in the cracked area and I had only two small pieces of cast iron in the pan,not nearly enough to make up for this void. This pic is after I smoothed it out a bit. Hmmmm, looks like this pic will be posted later as it is not showing up in my file and when I send it from my phone to my email it does not show up, stay tuned....

Here we go, a pic of the broken bore

Shaping up good. I'm a little concerned about the block. Chunks out are never a good thing. The scoring in the cylinder could be hit or miss. Ebay has rebuild kits $80.00 to $150.00. Might pay to search for another motor for the block or clapped out tractor for the motor etc.

I have a build kit for this so I am going to go ahead and put it together. It is a sunk cost at this point, might as well see what happens.

Roger that. Looking forward to the results. I guess as long as nothing is flopping around in there, you should be OK. Here's looking at another 50 years of lawn work.

It may be the camera angle but the hone marks look like the angle is too shallow. They really should be closer to 45 degrees. You need a slow drive speed and a fairly fast stroke.

I'd also keep at it until you can't catch a nail on the vertical scoring. You don't need to make it disappear but if you can catch a nail on it there's a fairly good chance that it'll keep the rings from rotating.

Unless it's up far enough to be in the ring travel range I wouldn't worry about the chunk out of the bottom of the bore.

Thanks for that. My drill speed was to high. I will keep at it.

WhatistheWheel wrote: Ordered a rebuild kit(piston, rings, rod, valves, all gaskets and seals) from Pat's Small Engine, $92. The factory Kohler kit is $345, about $15 more than a rebuild kit for a smallblock Chevy

I read that as "it's cheaper to put a SBC in it, so I will start a new build thread."

The chunk out of the bore will probably be fine. I'd measure the bore and crank, the crankpin should be measured with a micrometer that goes down to .0001. You don't want to put money into an engine only to have it rattle or smoke just to save a few bucks at the machine shop.

Specs here. http://gardentractorpullingtips.com/engspecs.htm

Following along. The K341 in my Ariens needs to be rebuilt soon as it smokes a lot. I want to get the second tractor with a KT17 running first before I tear into it.

Careful when you keep at honing. You want to mic it to see how much you took off. It may require oversized rings. Also, mic the crank for diameter. What kind of hone are you using? Sniff around CR List for another cheap motor. I found a 12HP K-301 in NJ asking $150.00 May be worth your while if the block and crank are OK. You already have the rebuild kit. Good luck.

The completed engine. This was about two months ago, it has about 8 hours on it now, this is mostly to check a photo link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q_6YFNUTvYfbwYMVTO5iOAPa1w52Ba6ZQw/view?usp=sharing:tnp.jpg

That did not work, here it is:

So, was the rebuild successful? I'm glad you went that way, a vintage Kohler just looks much better than a modern Harbor Freight engine.

My dad had a Wheel Horse tractor when I was a teenager, it was a little smaller than yours but of the same general era and design.

In reply to stuart in mn:

It is running fine. I added a tach/hour meter to monitor the engine better. The week after I got it running an idler pulley failed but I found a MTD replacement that, based on the dust, a shop had in their inventory for about two decades. A little red paint and it was ready to go again.