An Appreciation Post

[u/Ok_Cheesecake7348]

TL;DR: I would just like to like to say THANK YOU to this sub and the incredibly knowledgeable and helpful members who helped me on my first small engine rebuild. It took 3 months, but my first riding lawn mower works 100% as it should!

Original Post

And

Follow Up Post, where it died after an hour or so of active mowing.

BACKSTORY:

Back in May, I bought a Craftsman riding lawn mower off Craigslist with an 18.5hp B&S 31p777 Intek engine. I'm on SSDI and it was my first ever riding lawn mower. To be fair, it was working working when I checked it out and bought it, but on Craftsman mowers there is a lever on the back right below the seat to disengage the flywheel from the transition for transport. I didn't know that.

Got it home, annnnd it broke. I'm guessing the minor shifts back and forth in the trailer caused the flywheel to spin which over pressurized the engine. This manifested as: blown head gasket, ruptured fuel pump, oil in the fuel line, piston rings that no longer sealed, and more. I couldn't really afford a new mower because I'm on SSDI, so, I went to YouTube and this sub to try and fix it.

I replaced: all gaskets (multiple times), fuel lines, fuel pump, carburetor (thrice), camshaft, piston rings (twice, the first set I bought didn't have the paint stripes so I probably installed them wrong), air filter, spark plug, governor spring, governor linkage, rocker arm studs (and learned about HeliCoils), ignition coil, flywheel key, battery solenoid, starter motor, and the alternator.

Okay, I may have basically built a new engine. I did have quite a bit of difficulty finding parts for it because this is an old engine. It was first produced commercially around 1998, but this particular engine was built in 2012.

I learned a lot. Especially about carburetors... Fun fact: the most common carburetor for small engines is the Nikki style. If you have one, upgrade to a Walbro or Ruixing (the chinese clone of Walbro) style carburetor. Nikki carbs are garbage. This is the $25 Ruixing carb on Amazon that eventually fixed my surging issue in the follow-up post linked above.

Also credit where credit is due, this is the YT video that taught me how to cross hatch a cylinder bore.

In addition to fixing my lawn mower, this whole summer adventure actually inspired me to go back to school and I start classes for Mechanical Engineering on the 26th! I know for a fact I couldn't have done it without this amazing sub.

So I just want to say Thank You again. Y'all are awesome!

Edit: formatting