Too true. When I have had the misfortune of working with a BS engine a screwdriver was always at hand to fine tune the beggars. Since the advent of the Honda engine on my mower tuning has been totally unnecessary. :)
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1. I lose track of how many vertical shaft BS engines I've worked on, most were old and cranky and all of those have the carby on the fuel tank, which is why I mentioned carby diaphragms in my first post. Instead of a needle and seat they have a constantly overflowing chamber in the top of the tank, pumped via crank case pulsations.
2. All BS engines I've seen have a mixture screw. From memory they sometimes hide in a hole in the throttle cable bracket.
3. The choke is designed to run with the air cleaner on, perhaps it isn't on properly.
Ended up putting in a 2nd carb kit.
When I installed the first one I some how got the diaphragm missed aligned and one of the screws damaged the diaphragm - I think it was sucking air. After putting the 2nd kit in it is starting easily and running properly.
Geez I am missing out.
My old B&S 375? Rover Craftsman was bought about 20 years ago second hand and it had several years on it then.
I change the oil every few years, and treated it to a new spark plug and air filter a couple of years ago.
It has always started first or second pull and run properly straight away.
I am hoping it will die one of these days as I would like to justify a new Lithium lightweight mower as it is a bugger to lift and push up my hill.
Similarly when I was a kid I did lawns with a Rover B&S and it lasted 15 years and started easily until submerged in the flood of 74 in Brisbane.
Regards Philip A
I had a one-man lawn mowing business which I sold about four years ago,and I had two self-propelled Rovers on board,20" and 22".Both had Briggs engines which I serviced religiously weekly.The engines were great until they experienced a little compression drop,then if you switched them off when hot you would throw your shoulder out trying to start the bastards.I soon woke up and got my mowershop to fit Honda engines when time came to replace engines or complete mowers.You only needed half a pull to start.Beautiful.They then started to build the Hondas and Rovers in China.They look identical but the quality was gone in both.
Got three Hondas. The first one I got was a GXV (?) 120 on a Big Bob deck. The thing is about 35 years old and it starts first time, even if it has sat all winter. Blows a bit of smoke when first started but that's all. The only time I have ever had trouble with any of them is when I got some water in the juice.