Tossed to the Curb - Neglected Push String Trimmer

hey guys welcome back so today we're working on this Swisher trim and Mo and it was on the way home the other day and I passed this machine at the end of someone's driveway you know it looked like they were hoping for someone to take it away so I turned around and thankfully they pulled in their driveway right when I was pulling up so I was able to confirm that indeed they were hoping that this would disappear so I shoved it in the back of the car didn't really ask too many questions but I did pull it over and the engine pulled over fine it has compression So in theory this should run again you of course from looking at it I can tell this machine has been neglected it is pretty Rusty and crusty so before trying to start this you know I'm actually going to fire up the pressure washer we're going to get some of the dirt off then we'll bring it inside you know see what it needs and with any luck get it up and running again [Music] he yes [Music] it cleaned up pretty well although the paint it's not in great shape it is bubbling pretty much everywhere so I would say this has been outside for quite a while and in fact the pressure washer took a bunch of pain off right there anyway I think it goes without saying that this likely doesn't run which is why it was pushed to the curb so almost guaranteed we're going to have to pull that carb and clean it you know I did take a look in the tank and it is mostly empty uh there is a little bit of fuel old fuel down there it smells pretty bad so you know likely the carb is not going to run the engine at all but I say we give it the benefit of the doubt you know we'll add a little bit of fresh fuel pull it over and see if it shows any signs of Life Of course before we do that let's just take a look at the air filter check the oil and if all looks good good we'll try to start it uh there is some in there it looks like it might be a little low and yeah it's it's in the safe Zone but just barely so we are going to have to add some and I'm going to change it anyway but let's let's hear the engine run first before we change that oil and let's take a look at the air filter that was kind of loose so I think someone's been in here actually I can tell someone's been in here cuz we're missing Hardware right there and I noticed we also have this clip up on the starter recoil rope you I think that goes behind here somewhere so just going to set that aside we'll deal with that later and the air filter not in very good shape that might be original to the machine so I'm going to set that aside for now and we'll come back to that later [Applause] all right I'm going to turn the choke on this also has a primer so I'll prime it a few times let's try it out all right let's give this a try the choke is on I pumped the primer about three times so it should do something and we get nothing so I'm going to try a bit of starting fluid you know if it kicks off then we know we have spark and compression awesome well that 2 seconds of run time told me quite a bit we know for sure we have compression spark and timing fuel is the issue so without a doubt that carburetor has to come off and get cleaned up but there were two other hints of possible problems as well you know first off when the engine was starting and also shutting down I heard what kind kind of sounded like a knock you know I'm kind of optimistic that maybe it was something else rattling you I guess we're not going to know for sure until we get the engine running a little bit longer and the other issue I noticed was a bunch of debris flying out from under the blower housing so I think we should just get the carb off the tank off the blower housing off we'll clean everything up put it back together and go from there all right the tank is technically free except for the fuel line so let's go after the carb next and we'll Circle back to the tank before we get this carb off let's clamp off the fuel line and remove it from the carb while it's still secured I'm actually going to replace this line I think so we will just cut it off of looks like we're almost free there is a tin here that kind of folds under but it looks like we should be able to push it off oh yeah we've got a mouse house [Music] yeah Mickey made quite a mess in here surprisingly though the wires are intact you know I don't see any missing insulation so I think we got pretty lucky on that one you know the blower housing complete mess tank kind of a mess as well and the carb I'm sure it's a mess but that one is not Mickey's fault so let's get that opened and see if we can save it let's start by getting this fuel line off which easier said than done let's cut that off oh yeah that's the good stuff that is pretty dark it almost looks like two stroke not sure it is though although if it is two-stroke that oil would preserve the carburetor so let's hope that that's what it was and yeah look at that so I'm thinking that was two stroke fuel because the inside of this carburetor looks to be in fantastic shape you the bowl is almost spotless needle and Float look good and that's more or less it I mean we have an emotion tube right there it's not removable we have a replaceable rubber seat right there so I'm going to have to be careful putting this through the ultrasonic because that can damage the neoprene so I'm going to try to get the B Gas get out this seat is going to have to stay where it is if it becomes damaged then we'll replace it and these ports here at least the one on the left does look to be clogged and and we also have an O-ring right here which we can remove so yeah this actually is going to clean up really well and just one thing to note the primer in order to work I think it does need a good seal on the bowl and also the airbox needs a good seal to the carburetor so we'll test the primer if it doesn't work we may need some new gaskets and seals that's it nothing else comes out of the carb this here is the main jet let me shine a light through there see if it's clogged not sure how well that shows up on camera but the main jet does not appear to be clogged so this carburetor actually had potential to run the engine you know if that stuff wasn't in the bowl so yeah let's give this a quick soak I actually think I'm just going to use some dish detergent cuz this is not that bad and I don't want to damage that seat and that's actually not drilled out so that was not clogged like I thought it was and we have a little passage right here which seems to be free carb cleaned up pretty well so I would say there's a pretty good chance that this is going to run the engine properly so uh let's get it back together starting with the Bold gasket and then we'll do the needle and float and lastly the main jet not a whole lot to this carb okay I'm going to set this aside for now uh let's clean up the tank and then we can get this back together I've already knocked off all the heavy dirt on this blower housing it's going to need to be painted uh but I'm not going to do that yet you know we still need to hear the engine run I'm pretty sure it's going to be fine but I don't want to paint this all up real nice just to find out that the engine isn't usable going to put a little bit of fluid film on some of the parts down here you know like the governor arm it got a bit Rusty I think that was Mouse Central and then right here as well I mean I don't want to get any on The Brak but I think putting a little bit of fluid film on some of the metal down here is going to do nothing but help I'm noticing the governor linkage it is bound up right now we're stuck at Full Throttle so that Governor arm you know that's where I found the Dead Mouse right underneath and of course that arm is all rusted up so we're actually I think bound up so if I were to start it right now the engine would just run at wide open throttle so let's get this cover back off see if we can't free that up I think that's the problem area right there so the governor arm comes over connects to that shaft and goes down into the engine and you can see there's a bunch of junk kind of between that Governor arm and the engine block and I'm willing to bet if I clean that out things should start moving again kind of like going in the dentist got to get all the plaque off you know worst case too this arm is really kind of far down on the shaft so we could well theoretically loosen up this bolt and slide this arm up a bit to get more clearance between the arm and the block see if it's moving yet nope it is not budging that yeah that is really tight there's no way the governor is going to be able to control that throttle so I'm thinking we need to remove the governor arm and actually get this moving better or at least move the governor arm up a little bit cuz right now it's just right against the block and that is not helping anything that that made quite a difference so kind of confused as far as what happened here was it the mouse or was the governor arm just driven down to the point where it couldn't move cuz it was hitting the block because now that it's up it functions perfectly so you know I might bring that up a little bit more loosen this up a little bit more we'll just do do a governor reset and I think we'll be [Music] good all right so we're pretty loose on that shaft so what we want to do here is find idle and wide open throttle in this case idle is when you turn the shaft clockwise and wide open throttle is counterclockwise so right now the spring is holding this arm in the wide open throttle position so all we need to do is rotate the shaft counterclockwise until it stops and then we just lock down and the calibration is complete you know what that shaft is completely Frozen so the only reason this is moving now is because I loosened up this nut the shaft not moving at all so think we need to get the whole arm off and work at this a bit more all right I kind of have a bad feeling about this like we might end up taking the whole engine apart to fix this but hopefully hopefully we can free it up so this is just a bit of PB Blaster going try this a few times and then likely hit it with some heat see if we can't get some movement out of it pretty sure there's a plastic seal there so applying heat may not be the best idea but I'm hoping if I heat up the shaft maybe it'll start spinning I wouldn't say it's moving freely but at least it's moving so we'll do this for a few minutes I'm sure it'll work itself out yeah I think I see the issue here you know I thought this might be a plastic seal but I think it's a spacer I think it's a washer and that I'm pretty sure is what is creating the problem here anyway you get the idea you know it's it's moving but to be honest it's it requires a ton of force and it's I mean it's getting a little better but as it is right now there's no way this is going to work but let me keep working on it I can't really make it worse can only make it better for you know although this shaft is moving it is not moving freely and there's no way that that's going to control the engine speed so to save this engine I think we are going to have to open it up and remove the governor and clean it up to have any chance of that working of course yeah I really don't want to do that yet because I don't know 100% if this is a good engine so what I'm thinking is we should just remove remove the governor Rod remove the governor spring which is holding this in the wide open throttle position and then maybe relocate the spring to hold it in the idle position uh the issue is this doesn't have an idle set screw so if we just hold it right up in the idle position that's actually fully closing the throttle plate and it's not going to run like that so uh there is a casting there is a Hole uh it's not threaded but I I think we can tap some threads on it you know I have this other Briggs carb it's not the right size for this engine but it does have the set screw and I'm willing to bet we could just transfer that over to there once we get some threads on there I really thought we were going to hear this run properly tonight and then the biggest problem was going to be fixing the paint uh but I'm not too worried about the paint anymore we have much bigger [Music] issues I couldn't find the right size tap for the screw that was on that other carburetor so instead just going with what I have which I think will be fine for testing cuz that is not going to stay in there this idle set screw all right we'll start like that don't want to open it too much we'll get it started and then make some adjustments all right I got the the blower housing back on the throttle is in the idle position it might be too slow might be too fast so we'll try starting it if it starts we'll try to adjust it while it's running but we might have to shut it down to make the actual adjustments I'm just realizing too I'm wrong about this I assumed it was a choke and that we also had a primer on the airbox and this piece here actually seems to do well I guess nothing because the spring is gone so this is actually a throttle control interesting anyway since we don't have a choke or a primer we'll just help it out a little bit so what do you think is it going to knock is the engine going to race out of control is it going to start at all I think it'll start Maybe nice now what can I say the engine runs and it actually sounds good that noise I thought was knocking was just the machine rattling the actual engine sounds great the carburetor is running the engine quite well really the biggest issue here is the governor so I think we're going to have to order a new one because that shaft it is obviously severely rusted and pitted but I also mushroomed it a bit so I don't want to pull that shaft out of the block and mess up the block so likely we're going to have to cut the shaft off and just pull out the remains so before I order anything for this engine I think kind of the big thing here left to check is the pulley you know to get the engine opened up we need to get the pulley off and I'm sure that pulley is quite Rusty like the rest of this machine so let's actually get the oil out we'll get the engine uninstalled flip it over and see if we can't get that pulley off sh so what do you think nope [Applause] I'm going to try a puller usually don't use them on pulleys cuz the pulleys Bend quite easily but the bottom part of this pulley is actually some pretty thick material so I think I can apply some pressure before I need to worry about causing any damage yeah it's coming off beautiful the parts they've been ordered they'll be here in a few days I got a Sten oil seal from Amazon as well as a Sten gasket and I actually went to eBay to find the governor shaft it is used uh but for $9 I get a used Governor shaft that looks to be in good condition and more importantly it also comes with a governor arm and a bolt and nut so all that stuff will be replaced which is probably a good thing because that stuff is Rusted pretty bad so while we wait for those parts to arrive I'm going to bring this back outside I'm going to spray a bunch of Degreaser on it rinse it off and then bring back in I want to get the engine opened up get that old Governor shaft out and then just prep this as much as possible for reassembly I'm also going to take the coil off I don't think the water will hurt it but I don't want to risk it either for before I get this engine block opened up I'm going to cut off the shaft at least the damaged part for the governor system you know I'm going to sand off the bur oil it a bit with some penetrating oil and then we'll flip it over get the cover off and see if we can't uninstall that Governor shaft [Music] [Music] [Music] there we go okay and we are in so the component we're interested in is this paddle right here this is right against the governor and this also doubles as the oil Slinger you know as this rotates it dips down into the sump where the oil is and it picks up oil and just splashes it all around so this kind of serves two purposes so we'll move that out of the way for now you know everything looks to be really good in here as I expect you know this engine hasn't suffered any trauma uh we do have the plastic cam gear or at least the gear is the shaft is metal but the lobes are plastic so this is another point of failure uh I actually did a video on that some time ago and ideally this would just come right out there shouldn't be anything holding it in place but it is stuck solid so I'm going to apply some heat and we'll just use the pliers to hopefully wiggle that out yeah this one's going to be a bit of work got it yeah I thought that was oil on there at first but that is corrosion goes down the length to the washer so doesn't look like much I mean that could be cleaned up but I've already cut it short and for 9 bucks we have one that looks to be in perfect condition so we'll just wait a few days for that to show up you know for now I'm going to clean out the boore and just get this old gasket material removed for I took a second just cleaned up the bore and also cleaned some of the rust scale off this Governor shaft now although I don't plan on using it it's still good to use just as a test that things are going to work out with the new used part that's on its way and you can see that Governor shaft moved moves freely like it should so yeah it didn't take much I mean there wasn't a lot of scale there so the tolerances there are very tight and any rusts well it's going to be an issue but it's not anymore so let's uh let's clean this surface up and then I think the block will be ready just rotating this engine to top dead center which will be when that Mark on the gear aligns with that mark on the cam shaft so I'm going to get the cam shaft out it just make it a lot easier to clean things up and that way if I drop anything in it's not going to be all over the cam and when I pull this out the lifters might fall out although it looks like they're in there pretty good so we'll just leave them there and we have two dowel pins let's get those out of the way and we use a sharp new razor to clean this up or we'll just leave them I just took a second and put this engine cover back on because I want to keep the dust out from inside the engine you know what I plan on doing next is sanding and refinishing a few parts on on this machine so you know I'm going to start with the blower housing we'll just knock some of this rust down get some primer and fresh paint on it and then I want to do the same over here this is pretty bad and really you know I'm not trying to make it look perfect but I definitely can improve on its looks and more importantly getting some fresh paint on there should dramatically slow down what's happening with the rust he [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] I [Music] [Music] is e [Music] [Music] [Music] e it's the next day and the parts they are nice and dry you know overall I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out you know if you don't look too close you would never know how bad a shape they were in anyway I think it is time to get everything back together you know the parts I was waiting on have arrived we've got the governor shaft the governor arm some of the hardware to install the governor so I'm going to start there and then we have the new oil seal and the crank case gasket so this stuff should get the engine fixed and once that is done we will just get the rest of the machine together and try it out just going to get the governor out of the way actually before I do that though let's get the paddle in and it's kind of a tight fit yeah looks like the shaft it's marked up a little bit so we're going to make that smooth uh before this is going to install properly it feels pretty good let's try that yep that feels a lot better so I'm going to move over this washer which goes on the inside of the engine and it goes all the way down until it hits kind of this area on the shaft that is pinched so it can't go down anymore so I'm going to add a little bit of oil to the shaft we'll drop it in and then on the other side we have this lock washer which which I ordered a new one cuz the old one was corroded and not really holding on but the point of this is to essentially lock this in from the top so that it can't fall into the engine there we go so like that the governor shaft it's locked in you know if I push it or pull it it doesn't move move but if I move it left or right moves without issue just take note before you pull the seal out you know check where it is right now as far as the depth because you want to put the new one in the same as the old for all right let's set this in place we'll roughly line it up with the governor shaft paddle and when I put the crane case cover on that's what holds this governor in place but you do have to have it roughly in the right spot so I'm actually going to tilt the engine a little bit better so that this doesn't kind of fall out of place and once the cover goes on you know it's going to lock it in right where it needs to be for going to use a little bit of anti-seize to help the next guy out just putting a bit of Loctite on this bolt it looks like it had some originally now I don't know the torque spec on this bolt you know it's a fine thread bolt and this engine it's used on lawnmowers quite a bit usually those blade adapters get torqued between 40 and 60 footb so I'm going to bring this one up to 40 and I think that should be good enough [Music] all right let's get the coil back on I did clean up right here where it makes contact you need a clean good connection in order for there to be good spark so we'll get the kill wire plugged back in and this coil is labeled says right there this side out uh so make sure you do that or else you're not going to have spark or if you do have spark it's going to be weak and the spark timing is going to be off and to Gap the coil just use a business card to set a gap of approximately 10,000 of an inch right now the magnet's under there so if I loosen up these bolts the magnet's going to pull the coil in and that's going to provide perfect Gap and then rotate the engine at least once around make sure the coil does not make contact with the flywheel and in this case we're good all right let's get this Governor fully back together so I've removed that temporary spring and I put the governor Rod back on so now it's attached to the arm which we can drop on to the shaft like that that's idle that's Full Throttle so in that position that should turn counterclockwise so we'll just turn it until it stops which is right there and being sure that it stays in that position we just need to tighten up the arm while holding it in the wide open throttle position all right that feels pretty good so theoretically the governor system is fixed but we can test it before starting the engine to do that I'm going to pull the spark plug so there's no compression and put the brake in the off position and then I'm going to rotate the engine with a drill clockwise what we should see if the governor is working is that as the engine picks up speed this arm should move toward us uh right now it's in the wide open throttle position so I did reide the governor spring I'm actually going to remove that so the only thing in place here is the force that the governor is going to exert hopefully on that arm all right keep an eye on that Governor arm going to hold the brake off and rotate the [Music] engine beautiful and we're now in the idle position so the governor seems to be fixed yeah we're getting pretty close I was just about to put oil in the engine and then it occurred to me this engine it's not going to run I actually made a mistake quite a ways back when cleaning the gasket Material off I pulled that cam shaft out to make it easier to clean but also I wanted to keep some of that gasket debris from getting all over that cam so when I started sanding you know I thought it would be best to put the cam shaft in the engine close it up to keep the dust out but when I put the cam shaft in I never timed it you know the plan was to time it when putting the governor shaft in and of course that took a few days to arrive so by the time it arrived I just threw it in and never check the timing so I went back to the video of Me closing up this engine and and I can see clear as day the engine's out of time and there's only one way to fix that you know I need to pull this engine back off pull the pulley off the crank and open this engine back up and set the timing get the governor out of the way and I think you can see we are off by a tooth which doesn't sound like a lot but being a tooth off likely the engine would have run but very poorly and if more than a tooth off chances are it's not going to even try to run but now we're on time so we'll get this Governor back in get everything bolted back together and pretend like it never happened for looks like we're perfect the line is right at the full mark all right let's get the fuel line back on I did make up a new line and added a fuel shut off which for a gravity fed system really is not optional you know needles do leak sometimes very slowly and if you're going to leave fuel in it you want to be able to shut it off just in case it's leaking past that needle so it looks like the line is just a little bit too long so I'm going to cut that maybe a quarter inch shorter and we should be good to go all right let's give it a quick try for fully getting it back together I want to see that the governor has control that the throttle is responsive and the engine doesn't overs speed and I also left this protective cover off because you know the last couple times I ran it it was making a lot of noise and initially I thought it was the engine but I think it was just the cover so I want to validate that and the governor so I don't have the airbox on yet so I will have to give it a little bit of help with some starting fluid since the primer is part of the airbox all right let's give this a try throttle is turned down [Music] [Music] [Music] I'd say that was a pretty good test you know it did start after a few pulls uh the governor had full control of the engine speed uh the max speed was just over 3200 RPM which seems pretty good uh but the carb it did have a surge in it you know that surge kind of worked itself out as the engine warmed warmed up so I think we're going to be okay especially once we add that airbox back on you know as far as that noise you know I think it's actually just this piece right here you know it is a little bit sloppy inside of that tube and it's just shaking and rattling so there's really not a whole lot that can be done on that so I say we get the cover back on we get the airbox back on we'll test the primer real quick make sure it works then we'll bring it outside see what it can do all right it's kind of hard to see but let's see if the primer Works yep seems to be fine I don't think we're going to be reusing this it's pretty bad so I do have a new filter uh it doesn't have the pre filter though which if you're going to be running it in dirt like that you should have a pre-filter anyway let me blow this out real quick we'll clean it up and get the new filter in I think this mystery piece goes right there although it's not very tight and honestly I don't think it's needed in this application but we'll keep it with the machine just in case [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] no [Music] [Music] [Music] it's making quick work of the brush so plenty of horsepower good control of the engine speed uh but the surging it's not really going away as the engine warms up so I'm going to drop the bowl again real quick go through the main jet real well and we'll give this another go yeah look at that there is some junk in the bowl so that for sure could have been causing a run issue so I just dumped it out go through that jet again and we'll try this again for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] overall I'm pretty happy with the way this thing turned out especially considering where we started you know someone pushed this to the end of their driveway hoping to make it disappear and for good reason you know this machine was neglected it was left outside for years on end and of course the mouse caused the most damage of all with that Governor shaft so yeah bringing this to a shop to repair would not have been practical from a cost standpoint you know the labor alone would have been more than this thing is worth uh but as it turns out it's very fixable you know for $12 we got that Governor system back up to 100% you know a $5 can of paint and a bit of elbow grease and this thing turned out really well you know it starts first pull the engine sounds great and there's plenty of power to cut through this brush so yeah it's doing a really good job uh that said though it is not perfect uh there is still a slight surge you I'm kind of hoping it works itself out uh potentially that carb needs to be cleaned but I'd say more likely replaced uh but for now I think I'm done so I hope this video helped someone thanks for watching

Channel: James Condon

Views: 297,374

Keywords: Briggs and Stratton, Briggs, Carburetor Clean, Engine Damage, Engine Rebuild, Fixed, Governor Reset, Governor Shaft Frozen, Governor, How To, How-To, Left Outside, Mouse House, Mouse, Neglected, Oil Seal, Push Trimmer, Pushed to the Curb, Quantum, Repair, Running Fast, Seized, Small Engine, String Trimmer, Stuck Governor, Stuck Throttle Plate, Swisher, Timing, Trash, Trashed, Trim-N-Mow, Troubleshooting, Ultrasonic Cleaner, Weed Wacker, Wide Open Throttle

Id: mQOVOSVT_dU

Length: 100min 18sec (6018 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024