Lawn Mower Oil

...So, I bought a new lawn mower last Thursday. Naturally, it came dry, so I had to fill with oil and petrol. Petrol was no problem, I always keep a jerry-can or two for 'emergency purposes' but oil, hmm, could have sworn I had some cheapo generic oil on the shelf. Turns out I only have Castrol Edge 'in stock' as it were. Sealed container.

So my new lawn mower is running in on Longlife Castrol Edge VW504/507...

I don't know if Briggs & Stratton makes most of the lawnmower engines on your side of the pond, but they sell branded oil bottles with the precise amount of oil for their engines at most garden/home improvement stores. Laugh as much as you want, but your fancy VW 504/507 oil may not be rated for use in air-cooled engines.

Funny thing is that we were having a water cooler discussion in my office on Friday about how Briggs & Stratton engines love to be abused with crappy oil and poor fuel. Everyone agreed that the worse you treat them, the longer they will run.....

I agree. 504/507 may not be optimal in that application. I doubt there's any real harm in using it as a break-in oil, but I'd check the documentation and get whatever grade is recommended.

...So, I bought a new lawn mower last Thursday. Naturally, it came dry, so I had to fill with oil and petrol. Petrol was no problem, I always keep a jerry-can or two for 'emergency purposes' but oil, hmm, could have sworn I had some cheapo generic oil on the shelf. Turns out I only have Castrol Edge 'in stock' as it were. Sealed container.

So my new lawn mower is running in on Longlife Castrol Edge VW504/507...

Click to expand...

It would in fact be bad due to excessive blow-by from being too thin and poor heat transfer due to being air cooled by large expansion factors of the bore.

When the oil is thin it can't seal nor does it transfer heat as well.....and especially after the rich inherent mixtures used will quickly contaminate the very small sump with fuel!

Most small engines use a dip or whip effect to lubricate the main and heavy grade SAE 30 is superior for a non fed bearing journal in this case.

In the old days bearings were made of leather and saturated with oil ......believe it or not they worked pretty well.

Thanks Gents.

Arthur, the model I've gone for is a Mountfield - quite popular in England. They used to use a Briggs & Stratton; but they have now shifted to their own engines. That look incredibly similar to the Honda OHV small engines. I wouldn't say they copied it; but their designers may have been looking over the shoulders of the Honda people. Even down to the bit of tin plate with 'OHV' stamped on that you may have seen on the Hondas.

Jack, you're right on the money again with the weight of oil - SAE30 in the book. But I went for the 'Edge because: my grass was looking decidedly 'woolly' compared with next door; and also in the book a 5W30 could be used if one couldn't obtain SAE30 and 'Edge is 5W30. I'm going with Uwe, it can't really harm as a break-in oil, they recommend changing after 5 hours and I must have around two on the engine after my first season cut.

Again, I've seen the splash lubed engines before, with a small paddle like you say on the big end cap to throw as much oil around in there as it can.

p.s. LOL at Doc Brown.

Zenerdiode said:

Again, I've seen the splash lubed engines before, with a small paddle like you say on the big end cap to throw as much oil around in there as it can.

Click to expand...

I'm not really sure why a mower (or any outdoor power equipment) engine would be bothered by multi-weight oil. However, there's another better reason to use that Briggs branded straight 30W: it's blended without detergent additives, and that's almost impossible to find in an automotive oil these days. Non-pressurized, splash-lube engines without a filter want non-detergent oils. You don't want the oil carrying crap around in suspension if there's no filter to strain it out. Larger commercial-grade OPE engines with spin-on filters will probably specify something more like automotive oil.

Lurk in the BITOG forums for a while if you are interested in this stuff. They get waaaaaaaay too worried about it, including on OPE.

Zenerdiode said:

They used to use a Briggs & Stratton; but they have now shifted to their own engines. That look incredibly similar to the Honda OHV small engines. I wouldn't say they copied it; but their designers may have been looking over the shoulders of the Honda people. Even down to the bit of tin plate with 'OHV' stamped on that you may have seen on the Hondas.

Click to expand...

Those are called 'Chondas' over here. Chinese clones, parts are even swappable between Chonda and Honda. Sold in Harbor Freight and the like over here. Supposedly they're quite good.

Jason

Zenerdiode said:

They used to use a Briggs & Stratton; but they have now shifted to their own engines. That look incredibly similar to the Honda OHV small engines. I wouldn't say they copied it; but their designers may have been looking over the shoulders of the Honda people. Even down to the bit of tin plate with 'OHV' stamped on that you may have seen on the Hondas.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a Chonda to me. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the design patent on the Honda GX series utility engines has expired, and China is pumping out clones.

Speaking of lawnmowers, have you noticed that the engines are running *much* lower RPM on newer units on that side of the pond? Do yours still have throttle controls? When they removed the throttle controls here, they set the fixed RPM at something insane like 1500 RPM. Being raised on lawnmowers running WOT and probably 4000+ RPM, the new ones sound wimpy.....

Not true Art you had no real throttle control then either and the governor always prevented an over speed and now the fixed jet carbs do run at a slower RPM because they are running over head valves and make more TQ in that lower range while burning less gas to cut through the grass.........

Not to hijack Dr. Z's thread but I will share this.......

FYI that is why any lawn mower will start and die immediately..... "like an immobilizer" if the fly weights are stuck open internally on the governor.
The centrifugal force pulls the throttle closed tight, right after it started further choking the engine drawing in fuel to flood the engine or block air entirely.

As a kid who got the most out of his mini bikes or carts I removed the governor entirely and installed a solid rod to the butterfly.
Now than you have direct throttle control and I would tune the jets for higher range and used good kid engineering judgment..... for how far I'd go ; and even how I would set points or move the mag to advance or retard base timing.

Biggest problem at that point for me became keyway shears from the extra TQ I'd make.............
That shifted my gears to playing with moving weight to the output shaft side or lead filling the piston and running dual connecting rods and bearings & lighter flywheels that didn't shear the key!

Needless to say I had a mini bike that did 85 MPH with a standard centrifugal clutch and 35 chain became 45 chain.........

jyoung8607 said:

I'm not really sure why a mower (or any outdoor power equipment) engine would be bothered by multi-weight oil. However, there's another better reason to use that Briggs branded straight 30W: it's blended without detergent additives, and that's almost impossible to find in an automotive oil these days. Non-pressurized, splash-lube engines without a filter want non-detergent oils. You don't want the oil carrying crap around in suspension if there's no filter to strain it out. Larger commercial-grade OPE engines with spin-on filters will probably specify something more like automotive oil.


Jason

Click to expand...

Jason: that's interesting - I have a few Briggs engines in various equipment here ( I'm on an acre property) and I'm not sure how these vary with those in your part of the world, but the Briggs branded oil that I use has the words 10-30W. I also have a Honda self-propelled mower and it uses Honda's 10-30W oil. Are these "multi-grade oils?

Don

Don, are you sure it isn't 10W-30?

I would assume that's a multi-grade oil containing viscosity index improvers. It's no clear to me why that's necessary or desirable for outdoor power equipment in your climate.

-Uwe-

Jack@European_Parts said:

Not to hijack Dr. Z's thread...

Click to expand...

Not at all Jack. We're in The Bar afterall, and I like (positively encourage) diversion or off-at-a-tangent discussion. Turn this into the 'Small Engine Devices' discussion if we want. I've only ever seen and fiddled round with the air blade governors. The centrifugal gov's must have been true and accurate ones (unless the weights stuck - of course!)

I'm reconing my little engine is indeed a 'Chonda' then. Badged as a RS100. I'm saying little; it's 100cc and does fine to cut the grass and propel itself. Considering a few moon cycles ago I had a Honda 50 Vision Electric Start -that managed to hump a skinny teenager up a 12% slope with his college books and bait in his backpack. (Bait=packed lunch).

My, there's a forum for everything Jason, those oil guys really get into it. Although one of my mates learned the hard way, why lights on the dash light up before you start. Yep, he'd been ignoring the fact that the oil light wasn't coming on in his diesel van for months; and if you've any kind of 'mechanical sympathy' you'll understand how blood curdling the screech of a seizing engine is...

Arthur mentioned the GX Hondas. I've got a 3ish kVA genny with a genuine Honda GX engine and when starting that you don't feel like you're trying to yark the piston through the starter string hole - it's much more a refined 'rolling' the engine into action. Thinking now, I wonder if that's because the direct coupled alternator adds to the flywheel effect?

Uwe said:

Don, are you sure it isn't 10W-30?

I would assume that's a multi-grade oil containing viscosity index improvers. It's not clear to me why that's necessary or desirable for outdoor power equipment in your climate.

-Uwe-

Click to expand...

Uwe: yes you are correct - my boo-boo (10W-30)

Don

Zenerdiode said:

Arthur mentioned the GX Hondas. I've got a 3ish kVA genny with a genuine Honda GX engine and when starting that you don't feel like you're trying to yark the piston through the starter string hole - it's much more a refined 'rolling' the engine into action. Thinking now, I wonder if that's because the direct coupled alternator adds to the flywheel effect?

Click to expand...

I have a 5.5 kVA generator with a Chonda engine (and *not* the Harbor Freight one), and the starting rope is geared so low that I wonder how it can even spin fast enough for the magneto to generate a spark. (This is coming from someone who has actually pull-started a 125 HP, 3-cylinder, 2-stroke engine with a rope wrapped around the flywheel.)

I want to retrofit the Honda electric start system onto it one of these days, but haven't had the motivation to see if they are compatible. It may be easier to just replace the engine, in which case I would replace it with a diesel so that I can run it from the heating oil tank instead of lugging petrol/gasoline around in 5-gallon cans.....

Well a really amazing small engine attached device to me has always been a "Jack Shaft" and or a belt/chain driven "Torque Converter".

It is my opinion that these devices as simple as they are, will be a solution for the future for power transfer.

You mix this with hydrostatic advantage and you have one hell of a combo!

Now Uwe or Art will state with conviction that my ideas will only move very slowly & with immense amounts of TQ.......... but I disagree!

Jack@European_Parts said:

Now Uwe or Art will state with conviction that my ideas will only move very slowly & with immense amounts of TQ.......... but I disagree!

Click to expand...

I had a Briggs & Stratton-powered go-cart with enough torque to climb a tree as a kid, but it didn't go fast enough to lift your feet off the ground without falling over sideways. So much for swapping chain drive sprockets.

Your turn to break his "free energy" heart, Benevolent Dictator.....

I had a Briggs & Stratton-powered go-cart with enough torque to climb a tree as a kid, but it didn't go fast enough to lift your feet off the ground without falling over sideways. So much for swapping chain drive sprockets.

Your turn to break his "free energy" heart, Benevolent Dictator.....

Click to expand...

Nothing is free but I know what I know or at least what I think I know and verified...........


"MMMM" or Mechanical Magnetic Manipulation Motors are in fact real...........

vreihen said:

I had a Briggs & Stratton-powered go-cart with enough torque to climb a tree as a kid, but it didn't go fast enough to lift your feet off the ground without falling over sideways. So much for swapping chain drive sprockets.

Your turn to break his "free energy" heart, Benevolent Dictator.....

Click to expand...

Vreihein: When I was a child (last century!), the idea of owning a mortised go-cart would have been the stuff of pure delicious fantasy!

My go-cart (my earliest -and still proudest construction) consisted of a couple of pieces of 4x2, an old wooden crate and 4 ball bearing races. And the measurement of go-cart torque for a hill climb was simply a product of how many childhood friends could be convinced to push me up the incline.

But the real joy came in the downward direction - except that it wasn't until I was much older that I properly considered the concept of braking (sadly). I thought that the "Fred Flinstone" method applied to everything that moved (I saw on TV that it worked for the cars in America, so I hypothesized that it should work on my cart). For a long time, I had to wear a few pairs of hush-puppies with ball bearing size grooves in the soles, but this was a small price to pay for the need-for-speed (albeit, Mum wasn't of a similar view)!

Our local billy-cart races were legendary in the 'hood any every child yearned for the title of "champion", which turned out to be a fleeting accolade - as owners kept refining the technology in their carts. I proudly held this title for a very short time until one of the other kids found out my secret - after that every billy-cart owner lubricated his (there were no girl cart owners) bearing wheels with engine oil. I still think to this day that it was a clear case of industrial espionage - but no one would fess-up to the deed!!

Don

PS: Not sure if you are an avid reader, but we have an ex-pat writer called Clive James (he lives in UK). If you get the opportunity, I suggest that you read his "Unreliable Memoirs". There is a chapter in the book about his childhood experience with go-karts - it's as funny as all sh#t!