Tired Tecumseh Troy-Bilt Tuffy Tiller - No Compression

hey guys welcome back so today I'm working on this Troy-Bilt tiller this one was dropped off by a subscriber named Paul who drove a whole trailer full of equipment up to me so I'm gonna make a few videos on some of those items starting with this tiller anyway the story behind this tiller was that it belonged to his neighbor and his neighbor offered it to Paul saying that it needed most likely a new carburetor or a carburetor cleaning so Paul took the tiller and he actually ordered the new carburetor and was getting ready to install it when he realized that although the engine's not stuck there is absolutely no compression so he did pull the plug he already took a look in there and he said the Piston is not moving so I will verify that and as far as the oil goes well let's just say I don't see any so yeah I would say this ran out of oil the connecting rod seized on the crankshaft and blew the rod you know can this engine be rebuilt I don't know and we're not going to know until we get it off get it opened up and just see how bad the damage is so let me get you set up a little bit better and get going on this that plug does not feel too good coming out of there I think I see the Piston going up and down I mean just just barely on that side but when I pull the engine over right there that that's the piston but there is no compression in the cylinder and I do feel air actually pushing out of the exhaust so I would say we just have a stuck valve so let me see if I can get in there a little bit better and take a look at that exhaust valve exhaust valve is opening so yeah I guess I'm not sure what's going on I mean the Piston seems to be going up and down exhaust valve is not stuck so let's get a compression tester on there and just make sure I'm not crazy but I don't I don't think we have compression [Music] it's not zero Maybe 10. so yeah we're definitely not going to run with 10 psi so I'm going to hook up the leak down tester just add a little bit of pressure and see where it's leaking out just rotated the engine until it was top dead center of the compression stroke so both valves should be closed so let's add a little bit of pressure and see where it's going definitely leaking from the exhaust nothing from the oil fill and it's a little hard to tell actually on the intake because I got the air filter on but that exhaust for sure is an issue until that is not leaking we really won't know how the rest of it is sealing up so I guess the question is is it just a little rust keeping that valve open or is it out of adjustment and something like this doesn't get used a lot so I would lean towards rust as the possible issue so I'm going to spray some PB Blaster in there just kind of soak things a bit and see if that fixes anything actually I'm going to use WD-40 I'm going to double check the compression now that there's some WD-40 in there see if it's come up any yeah maybe a little close to 20 psi still not enough to start it though we need closer to 50 or 60 PSI and my thought is once it starts running if there is any rust on the valve or the seat that just having the engine running should clean that up a bit so I'm going to give it a little more time with the WD-40 I think I might take the recoil off rotate the engine with the drill and see if that can't get that valve to seat any better ideally I'd get this up on the lift but it doesn't Freewheel the only way to Freewheel it is to remove the pin which has already been removed and this wheel is supposed to spin on the axle but it is Rusted in place and it's like that on both sides I think I'm going to leave it down here and before getting this recoil off and just turning the engine over hoping the valve kind of seats better I think I'm going to get the intake manifold off we'll get all this stuff off get the valve cover off and get a look inside see if there is any clearance on that exhaust valve I can tell just by rotating the engine there's no clearance on the exhaust valve and the intake is not far behind I'd say the intake is almost zero as well so yeah the only way to fix that on this type of engine is to pull the head get the valves out and take a little bit off the valve stem to get the proper clearance so yeah let's start breaking this thing down we'll get the valves out I'll look up the specs to see what that Gap should be and we'll set it and put it back together this is easy [Music] curious to see if the engine really is empty yeah not empty there is something so I'm going to let that drain out I do want to get fresh oil in the engine it's a bad idea to let an engine sit around without oil in it or low oil in this case foreign and the oil that's in it is very thick and burnt looking so yeah this is long overdue for some oil [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] looks like the Critter did a number on this wire going over to the ignition coil so that will need to be replaced but for now let's finish getting this head off foreign [Music] foreign definitely not closed that valve should not be spinning if I rotate the engine the intake is now closed and that does not spin at all so yeah should be an easy fix cylinder doesn't look too bad but it's not perfect either there are two areas of concern one of them being right here you know I can just feel that and it's a similar spot over here in between the valves so yeah this one might be an oil burner which would explain why the engine was low on oil but the big issue keeping this from running is the exhaust valve so let's get both the valves out we'll set the clearance get this thing put back together and see if the engine will run okay the valves don't look too bad so I'm going to start just by cleaning the valves up and I'm going to take a little off the exhaust valve I'm not going to set the final clearance yet but I do want to get some clearance so I can lap both of these in and then I'll set the final clearance at four thousands on the intake and eight thousands on the exhaust thank you foreign the intake valves all lapped in and ready to go I actually didn't need to take anything off the length of this valve as it is it's coming in at about six thousandths which is over by a bit it should be four thousands and the exhaust valve I was aiming for eight and I overshot that one it's coming in closer to ten so yeah not ideal but it should run just fine so I've placed an order for a new head gasket we're waiting for that we'll get the mating surfaces cleaned up get this wire repaired and put a new fuel line in this one is pretty crispy actually before I move on I want to point out a couple things related to these valves I guess first off I said having excessive clearance shouldn't cause an issue but I can think of at least one thing that might be a problem and that's the decompression system when the engine's running slow the exhaust valve gets bumped on the compression stroke to let a little compression out and if the clearance is too big when the tappet goes to push or bump that exhaust valve it's not going to move the valve so I was just double checking that and right now we're on the compression stroke so the intake should be closed and the exhaust is closed as well but if I rotate it a little more the exhaust valve should get bumped just a bit and it did you can see it's open just a little and if I go a little further that valve is now shut so although the clearance is excessive it's not so much that it's basically disabling the decompression system but it is not going to open that quite as much as it should so the compression might be a little on the high side when trying to start it so we'll have to pay attention to that when putting this engine back together the other thing that I noticed which might explain why the clearance disappeared other than the fact that this is a 33 year old engine and most likely the valves have never been adjusted so it is normal that the valve wears into the seat a bit and that clearance closes up but in this case I noticed the valve is really loose in here so if I just bring it up a little and wiggle it around that that's moving quite a bit so I don't know what the spec is on that I would say that is an issue if I do the same kind of Wiggle test on the intake you can see it's much tighter so yeah it's not ideal having the valve that loose there is a valve guide in there I checked online on the parts diagram and it doesn't even show it as a serviceable part so I think I'm going to have to run it like this but it's not the end of the world the intake you don't want to have loose because if that is loose the intake's exposed to engine vacuum and that'll pull oil through it'll cause your engine to smoke it also pulls through unmetered air so instead of going through the carburetor it comes up through the valve guide and the engine runs lean and runs hot and the oil also causes a lot of carbon buildup which will cause issues with the valve seating properly so although this isn't great you know I think it's the best case scenario it'd be a lot worse if the intake was like that now the last thing you can do if you're checking the valve guide an easy check you can do is just put your finger Over the Hole where the valve stem came out and pull the valve out real quick and listen for a pup and there's absolutely nothing so that tells me the valve guide couldn't build a vacuum when I pulled the valve out that's because the clearance is excessive in the guide and a vacuum could not build up now if I do the same on the intake we should hear a pop if I can get the valve out hopefully you heard that let's try it again so the intake valve guide it is a snug fit and I don't think I'm going to have an issue with that all right foreign foreign foreign foreign a little bit longer than the original but I'll cut it to size later when installing the carburetor and the fuel tank hmm as far as this chewed up wire goes I was trying to unplug it down here and just wanted to replace the whole wire but it's not letting go so I'm not sure if it's not removable but I don't want to push my luck so instead I'm just going to cut the wire back right about here and I'll splice in this one from the coil to What's Left of the green wire and then that issue should be solved so I think we're at the point where I can get the valves reinstalled these valves don't use Keepers it just uses this cap to lock things in place so it's fairly easy to install but before I do that I just wanted to highlight an additional problem I found with this engine you know so far I've found excessive clearance on the exhaust valve scoring on the cylinder and now I found an issue with the intake valve when I initially took the valve cover off I had rotated the engine to the compression stroke but not top dead center I stopped right about there and I commented that the exhaust or sorry the intake looked like it had very little clearance on it but when I actually checked the clearance I was at top dead center that I found we had six thousands clearance which is over the specs so I left things alone but I double checked it and I found a problem which I've already compensated for but the issue was in the compression stroke if I backed up about a third this valve lost its clearance it went to zero and actually unseated so from the bottom of the compression stroke to about two-thirds of the way up this valve was not seated until the Piston got to the top and like that this would never run so I had to take off about nine thousandths from this valve so when the Piston is on the compression stroke at the bottom to about two-thirds of the way up I have four thousands clearance but that last little bit to the top the clearance increases to about fifteen thousandths which is excessive but it had to be made that adjustment had to be done that valve has to be closed during the compression stroke so yeah this engine it is a tired engine we have a worn out valve guide on the exhaust we have scoring on the cylinder and I'd say we have camshaft issues so really this engine should be rebuilt but in the end this machine is only used once a year I would say for most people in only a couple hours at that so with that in mind I mean this could last another 20 or 30 years even with a tired engine and I'd say these issues aren't from overuse it's from the lack of oil and the poor quality oil that was in there anyway let's get the springs and the retainers installed and move on foreign I think the head gasket showed up at least I hope it's in here foreign [Music] let's check the compression hopefully it's better than last time I think we were at 15 maybe 20 psi at best this time I'm hoping for 60. has a compression release so we shouldn't see higher than that granted the exhaust is misadjusted so it could be a little higher so let's see beautiful we're at 70 PSI and no issues pulling it over so the decompression is still working that's definitely enough compression to start the engine I think the only thing we're missing now is the carburetor so this came with a new carburetor I assume it's a clone could be wrong but I say we do the easy thing we'll put the Clone on there give that a try worst case we can always go back to the OEM actually before I put the carburetor on I want to hear the engine run I have not heard it run we do have compression don't even know if we have spark so I'm going to put a little bit of two-stroke down the cylinder and I've got a new plug we'll get that installed and it could be a little messy the valve cover is still off but that's okay I just want to see that the engine does run all right nice perfect the engine it sounds good so let's get the valve cover on get the carburetor on and run this a little bit longer under its own power I guess before condemning this one I should at least take a look it might be clean because the way the engine was it wasn't going to run and the carb may not have been the issue although usually is it's not terrible I mean this one can definitely be cleaned up you know I think we're missing an O-ring it probably stayed behind but other than that it's not in that bad a shape you know I think the only thing that's a little bit off is this choke lever and actually the whole plate moves around quite a bit you know I don't think that's a show stopper though this should work but I do have the Clone here and there's a couple things I like about it the main jet is fully adjustable and so is the pilot so it is a clone I'd say it is a gamble but it has some nice features so let's give this one a try and if it doesn't work we got Plan B [Music] foreign foreign fully putting everything back together I've had a lot of bad luck with clones it's kind of a 50 50 whether they're going to work or not and even if this one works it's going to need to be tuned a little bit so we'll make the needed adjustments to get it at least close try to get it idling and maybe try the gearbox see if the tines engage [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign I was expecting a lot of smoke from that exhaust and there was some but I think it was just oil burning out of there I don't think there's much if any coming from the engine itself so I'm pretty happy with that the engine itself sounded healthy doesn't sound like anything's about to fall apart so I think the engine is about there the carburetor it was actually running pretty well I did have to lean out the pilot to get it to run and idle better and adjusted the idle set screw a bit and we're pretty close I think there's really no point in fine-tuning it until that air filter is back on so I think I'm going to do that now we'll get the plumbing squared away and I would say fix this as well there's not enough tension and once that's done I would say the engine is there is really not much more to do to this engine but there is still an issue over here although the drive system works the wheels Engage The tines turn there is a leak in that gearbox I've been watching the puddle grow and we have a decent puddle under there at this point and the best I can tell is that it's coming from the oil seal on the input shaft right behind this pulley here so in order to act access that seal I need to get the engine out of the way get that pulley off and then I can swap that seal out so yeah let's finish up the engine and then get this thing 100 percent so I'm thinking of trying to add a fuel shut off to this there's really not a lot of room and there's a tight corner here so I'm not sure if it's going to make it without pinching the line but I think if possible we should add the fuel shut off so I'm going to give it a try shorten that up a little bit the original car but had a nice 90 degree so this line went cleanly into the carburetor but this clone carburetor does not have that so you can't exactly connect it like that so it is going to pinch right there so there's I guess two options one is two Loop it around which will work and the other might be to use a 90 degree adapter but even that would come out to about there and it would be a pretty tight connection so I think I'm just going to put a loop on it and I think that'll be okay it is a little tight it is collapsing a little bit right there but I think we might be able to get away with that as far as the Rope goes it's actually plenty long enough it just doesn't have enough tension so I could wind it an extra loop around there but I think in this case I can just cut off a little bit and that'll increase the tension holding this handle a little bit better perfect I ended up getting a new filter to replace this old one you know I mean technically I guess this is usable it's not broken but yeah it's pretty old and actually the rubber going around is absolutely petrified so I think the new one will do it a little bit of good let's get this Shield out of the way so we can get the belt off foreign some of that leaking oil had worked its way into the pulley there is a decent amount of rust on here and I'm not sure how well that's going to come off but before I can try I think I need to get this guard out of the way we'll get that bolt out and see if that pulley will come off [Music] foreign yeah this one's gonna be a fight let me try the puller first if that doesn't work we'll use some heat yeah I think I'm bending it already so yeah this is a bad idea let's not use the puller [Music] foreign [Music] foreign it's just a bit of WD-40 should help clean up that mess [Applause] [Music] I'm going to carefully use a screw to drive into that oil seal being careful not to damage any of the sealing surfaces and once that's in should be able to use a little bit of Leverage to pull out that oil seal [Music] [Laughter] [Music] there's water in there I was going to say you could tell by the color of the oil but now I just see water coming right out not good so I'm going to tilt this up a bit we'll just let it all drain out before putting that new seal in anyway you get the idea this is going to take a little while so I'm going to let it sit like this until it's all out all right I think we're ready to move on here it's been actually over 24 hours and I ended up tilting this completely vertical because there was a bunch down here and it was not oil it was 100 water down here so that is all out I think we're just about ready to go and here's a look at everything that came out I would say at least half of that is water and the oil that's in there is just mixed with water so yeah not good but I think it's time to get that seal installed I guess my only concern is the pitting on this input shaft it is pitted quite a bit right here and if you look closely with the oil seal was installed that race does look better I wouldn't say great so we might still have an issue there so I'm going to hit this just with a bit of sandpaper try to knock a little bit of that off we'll get the new seal installed fill it with oil and just let it sit for another day make sure that leak is fixed just gonna swap out the original cap this one is cross threaded doesn't really torque down properly and the O-ring is petrified so that's most likely how the water got in there and I just grabbed this cap it's from a Briggs engine added an O-ring and that one threads down without issue and snugs up real nice so that should prevent this from happening again that's going to be some of the nastiest oil I've seen it's been almost three days and everything is nice and dry so I want to say it's fixed but I think the real test will be spinning this shaft and putting this machine under load so let's get everything back together and then we'll get this outside and put it to work coupon a little bit of anti-seize for the next guy [Music] foreign [Music] foreign to get it off the lift I let the machine sit here for a couple days and discovered a pretty big puddle here so I mopped it up but you can see the staining it left on the cement and my concern was the oil seal may have been leaking the one that I replaced and fortunately that is not the case something I overlooked though is that this gearbox for the wheels actually extends down this tube to the back of the machine and turns the tines and the leak is coming right from here there's actually a cover here and when I was moving it around I could actually see this whole thing moving these three bolts that hold this cover on they are loose I'm not really sure why so I think I'm going to clean this up a bit get those bolts out open it up take a look at what's going on and then seal it back up not even remotely tight there are two crusty screws holding this thing on so yeah I'm not giving this one a whole lot of Hope [Music] thank you thank you clean this up a little more now that I have better access it looks like these bolts actually go through as well into the gear oil so we probably just need some RTV to seal this plate and some RTV on the bolts that should seal it I am not seeing much here you know there's a few hints of maybe our TV at one point you know I did pull off also a a piece of gasket so there was a gasket here at one point and it's long gone unfortunately and it's not on the cover either so yeah I think we'll just clean this up and seal it up with some RTV thank you so change a plan instead of using our TV I think I'm going to try to make a gasket to seal this up this plate I think is a good way to drain the gear oil in the future because gaskets can usually be reused and instead of changing the gear oil again I think I'm going to leave it in there because I do think I got all the water out but with a gasket it'll be easy to pull this off and train it out if I find that oil is turning cloudy So the plan was to use this punch set to punch a hole in some gasket material of the perfect size unfortunately the largest one I have is 35 millimeters and this actually measures closer to 45 so I cannot use the punch set to make a perfect circle so I'm going to try to do this freehand you know it doesn't need to be perfect it only needs to form a seal all the way around so it might take a couple of attempts but I think that is the way to go you know worst case I can always use our TV yeah ideally I would just order the OEM part here but it is discontinued and making a gasket usually isn't that difficult so let's see that should be large enough so to make the circle although I can't use this because it's only 35 millimeters I can actually probably use this side to make the circle it's still a little small 42 but that's okay because when I make the circle I'm actually making it around the 42 millimeter Circle that this punch is making so if I cut kind of on the outside of the line we should end up with something that is close to 45 maybe a little larger which I think will be fine pretty close perfect the outer diameter does not need to be exact here it's okay if it's a little bit long what does matter is where the placement of the holes are for the bolts yeah that should work that's just a bit of RTV on this bolt we'll do the same on the other two but we need to get the bracket back in here before adding those bolts together foreign check and yeah it looks like some water did mix in unfortunately I thought I was done then I took the cap off to just top off the oil to replace what was lost and I saw the oil was milky so yeah I guess I didn't get all the water out the first time So the plan is just to stand this up so that this part is facing down with what the oil seep out through here over a day or so and then fill it back up it's coming out faster than I thought because a metal bushing fell out when I tipped it over so that hopefully goes back in anyway it's going to make quick work of getting the gear oil out and I also drained most of the fuel and pulled the oil from the engine as well and it's surprisingly dark considering this was only run I'd say for maybe five ten minutes while testing it so I'd say there is a lot of sludge in there for sure so changing the oils out again I would say it was needed in this case so far I've only spent about thirty dollars to get this machine back up and running the way that it is now and I thought I was done but when I drained the oil the last time I stood this machine up pretty much vertical and although I had drained most of the fuel out of the tank there was some and I noticed there was fuel leaking and at the time I dismissed it as maybe I didn't tighten the cap or there was more in there than I thought and after the fact I got to looking a little closer and realized the fuel is actually coming from a crack right there in the tank so that is fixable potentially it could be melted back together or just some epoxy to seal it up but the more I looked around the more I found other cracks going all the way around and there was actually a plastic piece here as well which broke right off while working on this machine so this tank it is very brittle and I don't think it's worth repairing especially when brand new tanks are available on eBay for thirty dollars so I got one of those it's an easy swap just got to remove these two bolts disconnect the fuel line and put the new one in place I suppose we should look at the new tank before getting too carried away getting the old one off just in case it's the wrong one together yeah it looks like the right part even comes with a cap thank you before I can say this is done I need to put it to work and just make sure I don't know if the engine still makes enough power and of course there could be an issue with the gearbox or the tines you know something I haven't uncovered already so I don't have a garden but as luck would have it my lawn was recently dug up and it has not been seated yet so I say we start the engine put it to work and make sure there's no surprises thank you foreign what can I say it works really well and that's surprising for such a tired old Tecumseh it had no issues at all tilling this lawn and the gearbox did fine the tines as well no issues to report at the end we were surging a little bit and I was a little concerned we had an issue with the carb and well let's just say it's my fault because we ran out of gas so yeah overall pretty impressed you know for such an old machine it is built like a tank and I think we'll be around quite a bit longer so I hope this video helps someone thanks for watching foreign

Channel: James Condon

Views: 466,063

Keywords: Alternator, Camshaft Wear, Chewed Wire, Clone Carburetor, Compression Test, Cracked Fuel Tank, Fixed, Gearbox, Generator, Hertz, How To, How-To, Leakdown Test, Leaking Oil, Load Test, Low Compression, Low Oil, Milky Oil, Mouse Damage, No Compression, Oil Seal, Repair, Small Engine, Tank Leaking, Tecumseh, Tiller, Troubleshooting, Troy Bilt, Troy Built, Troy-Bilt, Valve Clearance, Valve Lash, Volts, Worn Valve Guide

Id: v3qWYgIdIwA

Length: 84min 1sec (5041 seconds)

Published: Thu May 04 2023