Briggs Engine Stuck at TDC

hey guys welcome back so today i brought home this stormresponder generator uh this one's a bit different i actually bought it from a flipper he was hoping that it was an easy fix but it wasn't when he got it the engine was stuck he pulled the fill cap off the engine block and was greeted with a flood of fuel in oil so there are issues with that carb but once he drains the oil pulled the spark plug the engine then would rotate but only to a point it will not make a full revolution so at that point he sold it to me anyway most likely we're dealing with a top end issue i'm not really sure so i'm gonna get you set up a little bit better i want to get the blower housing off the valve cover off and see if we can figure out what's wrong [Music] [Music] you [Music] you you so the intake valve is opening that seems to work fine and you can see right there the exhaust valve is opening a touch that's the compression release so neither valve is stuck but once i hit basically top dead center the engine won't advance and at that point as the combustion stroke there should be no valves moving at that point it should just be the piston going up and down so the fact that the piston can't get over top dead center tells me there's something wrong with the piston and it almost sounds like there's something maybe in the cylinder so i'm going to get out the boroscope take a quick peek see if i see anything interesting all right this one has me a little bit stumped you know i did pop the push rods out tried rotating the engine no change so i don't think we're dealing with a valve issue here and both valves i mean they're both all the way up and neither valve is stuck i can push each of these valves in and they feel fine so i don't think we're dealing with a top end issue you know the cylinder itself didn't look great but i didn't see any obstructions either that would be causing this so all i know is that the needle was not playing nice the engine filled with the fuel and potentially the rings are a bit rusted up or maybe there's some junk in the top of the cylinder because of that so i'm gonna try rotating the engine kind of rocking it back and forth and see if we can't get it to make a full revolution did wow a little bit of wd-40 it makes a full revolution now incredible all right let's get the push rods back in and see if it builds any compression uh yeah we got compression i'm gonna put the compression tester on there and see where we're at all right gonna try spinning this over just with this underpowered drill might not be able to get up to speed but hopefully it'll be good enough anyway this engine it does have a compression release usually 60 psi plus or minus a few is what i'd expect to see so let's see what this one comes in at [Music] nice we're at 60. so this engine will run we just got to get it back together and clean that carb all right now that we know that this engine is going to run i want to check that oil i don't know for sure that it was changed i only know that there was fuel in the oil and that it overflowed when he pulled the cap off so you know things don't sound well lubricated in there so i'm guessing maybe the oil was not changed yeah and that's a dry engine i don't see anything so i'm gonna pull a drain plug anyway just to make sure but yeah we need oil this is loose yeah we're dry and as far as the blower housing and the starter recoil goes there's nothing wrong functionally with the one that came with the machine but you can see it is a bit crusty and i do have three or four of these that are in much better shape so i'm gonna bolt this one on instead so since the valve cover's off i'm going to double check the valve clearance i've already rotated the engine to top dead center but if you're not sure the easy way to do this is to actually just rotate the engine until one of the valves is open all the way and then you know it's safe to check the other valve and you can repeat that for the other side if you do want to find top dead center you can just keep pulling the engine over until the intake valve starts to open then when it's closed you're starting the compression stroke so the piston should be coming up now if i keep rotating the engine and they were at the top you can actually go a touch past just to make sure the compression release is out of the way and both valves should be loose which they are the intake seems a bit too loose the exhaust is a bit better anyway i'm gonna do the first method i showed you and just get one of the valves to open and then we'll set this one all right briggs says anywhere between four and six thousands of an inch so i'm gonna aim for five and right now this is a five you can see it's quite loose let's just check and see where it's at let's try a seven yep seven fits fine let's try 11. actually 11 fits two 12. yeah so there's a bit of drag on it now so this valve is way out of adjustment so we'll correct that loose and set it to five thousands uh the five is still loose and six has good drag on it so we're somewhere between five and six that's close enough let's set the exhaust yeah that's about the same i'd say somewhere between a five and a six so it's good enough yeah not too bad actually the main jet is not clogged so yeah this one should clean up pretty well yeah the needle looks pretty good so not sure why it would have been flooding unless it was just a piece of junk stuck between the needle and the seat cleaned up pretty well it actually wasn't that dirty at least on the inside anyway i rinsed it with water and just blew it dry so this thing is ready to go back together yeah you got to be careful in putting in this main jet the smaller side with the o-ring goes down and when you drop it in a lot of times it kind of turns sideways so you want to make sure it goes down and seats all the way yeah like that i'm going to test the function of the needle and seat we know that was the issue really that led to me getting this generator so like this there's no fuel in it the needle should be open so i'm going to blow through and see if we hear the air and we do like this needle should be closed we should hear nothing and i do hear that there is air coming through so that needle does not seem to be working i want to open that up i do have other carburetors that i can steal needles from i actually have two clone ones that don't work very well but hopefully the needles are compatible with an oem nikki so yeah it looks the same that might work they're a little bit different but let's give it a try it's not working so may not be the needle actually that o-ring that i put on it actually seals kind of between where the fuel comes in and where the needle is if that o-ring is bad then it could lead to a similar issue and i mean the o-ring didn't look damaged but it did look different usually it's more of a rounded o-ring this one looks very flat so i'm not sure you know it might be the wrong o-ring all right we'll try this one this actually looks to be in pretty good shape i did check by the way the o-ring on the clone and it's a different size so hopefully you can see the difference here the one on the left is the one i just pulled out and it's rounded like an o-ring should be meaning obviously it's round in that direction but the walls from left to right are round the one here the walls are straight vertical up and down on both the inside and the out so yeah i think someone maybe they put a rebuild kit in it and it wasn't quite right so we'll go with the correct part and see if that makes a difference i'll actually put the original needle in as well so that way we can know for sure what the issue was you okay that's all it was this little o-ring was not the right part you yeah that's no good this spring up here is all stretched out it's supposed to be pulling it tight to hold the throttle open and it's not until the engine starts where the governor builds up force and starts to close it but you can see in this case i mean this spring is just it's gone so i do have extra springs i'll throw a new one on and i might bend the tab a little bit to the right so the engine won't over rev when we start this and then we can reset it once it's running yeah the spring on the top that's what it's supposed to look like yeah that's the way it's supposed to be now i don't know what speed the engine is going to run at given this new spring in the position that it's in so i am going to bend this tab a bit to the right to take a little bit of tension off i'd rather have the engine start up and run slow and then we can adjust it from there so all right i'm kind of short on time so i just want to do a quick test here so i've got the kilowatt out space heater out and the fuel hooked up i just want to get this running see how the engine sounds and see that it makes power because this frame although it's looks good over here if you look on this side you know it is pretty rusted and crusted and we got paint as well so i actually have another frame that is in perfect condition but i don't want to bother moving that stuff over until i know we have a viable machine here so i'm going to start it up the engine is going to be slow i backed off the spring tension i may not bring that speed up now i guess it depends on whether we get enough power out to do some basic tests so okay that's all i wanted to see it makes power the engine sounds good it was smoking a bit but that burned off after a few minutes so i think we're good all right pretty much ready to get this thing off the frame i've got the tank out the outlets out the stator is unplugged and the engine mounts and the stator mounts are loose so this thing should lift right up and to that end i do have a hoist actually way up there to uh to do all the hard work so i'll get some straps on that and lift that out slide the new frame underneath and drop it in place so [Music] [Applause] so so and of course we got the exhaust here it should clean up within reason i'm going to use a bit of scotch brite and a bit of wd-40 to clean a lot of that rust off [Music] all right i want to give this thing one last test i was in a rush last time when i did this so the engine speed i think is still a little slow so we'll start it up see how it is i might adjust it a bit we'll load it up run it for an extended period and just make sure that we're good so all right this thing started right up and it sounded pretty good the engine speed was slow so i bumped that up to 61.5 hertz loaded it to 3000 watts and the engine speed held just fine at 60 hertz so got pretty lucky on this one you know i thought for sure we were going to have some engine problems and it turns out it was really just the carburetor flooding the engine with fuel and most likely washing all the oil out of the top end and probably causing some rust on those rings so once i sprayed in a bit of wd-40 the engine rotated like nothing was wrong you know we got that carb fixed up a new governor spring and got the generator itself cleaned up so now it looks as good as it sounds anyway pretty much done with this really the only thing left is to throw this cover back on but i'm not going to bore you with that so i hope this video helps someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 46,094

Rating: 4.9718752 out of 5

Keywords: Borescope, Briggs and Stratton, Briggs, Compression Test, Engine Speed, Fixed, Flooded Engine, Gasket, Generator, Governor Spring, Leaking Carburetor, Leaking Needle, Nikki, No Oil, O-Ring, Oil Change, Seized, Small Engine, Storm Responder, Stuck, TDC, Troubleshooting, Ultrasonic, Valve Lash, WD40

Id: iL71E87C92Y

Length: 41min 1sec (2461 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021