The Briggs in the tractor
has points that wear about enough in one season that it will start to fire early, and when it does, it makes things pretty interesting.
See, I start it with a rope, most times, and when the points are worn they open a shade sooner, and it causes the engine to fire just a tad before top dead center instead of after, and the backfire can pull your knuckles back into the pulley.
So I tune it once a year, and since up until now I have been too cheap to buy a new battery (It usually gets a truck hand me down) it has made it much easier to start.
Still.
So Friday on the way home I used my phone to buy a battery and some cables at Autozone using paypal, and I got it all together Friday night. So nice to just push the button and start, I’ll tell you. Now I suppose I ought to go back to getting some work done with it.
I’m to the point of a new battery.
If I wait too long to cut the grass I’ve got to jump it from the truck.
I’ll need it this winter regardless.
But it costs money I don’t want to spend on it.
Yet.
An ojd Boat School classmate of mine had a retired 30′ open Bristol Bay gillnetter equipped with an Easthope five horsepressure one lunger which was started with a jillpoke stuck in a hole in the eighty lb. cast iron flywheel. He was attending to the carburation and fuel supply while I had flywheel duty. He said roll ‘er over, I did, the engine fired early, the jillpoke remained stuck in the flywheel for half a turn. That was sufficient to pull the jillpoke around through two strakes adjacent to the port side of the keel, and cut the keel in two and two strakes on the starboard side as well.
No fishing trip that day. I still have an uneasy feeling about big single cylinder engines of any stripe and will work endlessly to gob the job of cranking one off onto any passer by silly enough to try it.
The boat sank in ten feet of water. We raised her, lifted her on the Boat School marine railway and effected repairs in about two weeks which wsa time enough to call Easthope and obtain information to repair the magneto and carburetor and learn the tuning procedure and specs. To the best of my knowlege the boat and it’s ancient engine are still in good health. Bless ’em.
That’s scary, and points and condenser are a LOT cheaper than an ER visit… Just sayin…
Yer points shouldn’t wear that much in even 5 years….you don’t run the tractor enough.
If they are burning or pitted, then likely your capacitor is bad. OR there is something mechanical wrong and they are opening twice, or bouncing when they close.
THey should last about 300 hours before replacement, give or take. Unless the condenser goes bad, then they’ll die immediately.
You could always wet the surfaces with mercury….
The tractor is a 1964. Each season the points wear about .002. That’s enough to move the fire from after top dead center to before top dead center. Each year I clean them and adjust them in. I can tell how much they’ve worn by how the engine runs. I have changed the points exactly once due to wear, and the condenser works just fine. The engine will sit for a week, requires one pull to prime, and will start on the second pull every time, for forty five years that I have been using it, man and boy. If that kind of reliability means I’m doing it wrong, then I will continue to do it wrong, because it’s working fine for me.
Whoever makes a motorcycle-type kick-start adapter for the Brigss & Tecumsuh engines, will make a neat fortune, indeed.
No more wrenching one’s back with the accursed rope n’ recoil.
Besides, who doesn’t want to kick their lawnmower, just on principle?
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
45 years. I helped my friend take his 2002 JD water cooled Kawasaki twin apart Sat. Plastic oil pump gear came apart and stuck one rod and crank bearing. 1800 hours. The rest of the engine looked and measured perfect. The plastic gear looked like it just got brittle and broke. He thinks about a grand it will be running again.