better kohler piston

Feb 25, 2011 5 Replies
K

I'm going to let the machine rebuild project sit for a couple days...



Project "B" is rebuilding a kohler 12hp. model K301S engine on one of my gravelies. I ordered a cheap rebuild kit off eBay with a .030 over piston. Long story short this piston is actually only .025 over and its a really crappy piston. (The skirt is 12 thou bigger than the wrist pin) The cylinder wall isn't going to clean up as there's already a .020 over in it.



I looked in the gravely manual. They show three styles of pistons with far tighter specs. on styles B and C vs. the style A that I got.



Anyway, I need to order a top quality .030 over piston. Anybody suggest a place?



Karl



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P

Have you tried Kohler? They have some of the best support I've seen, even for quite old products. I know I've posted this before, but a couple years ago I had trouble with the Kohler engine on my old Deere

110 mower. I looked on their site but didn't see any info for this old engine, I figured it was hopeless, but I sent them an email with the engine model and serial numbers to see what they had to say. It was around 4pm CDT when I sent the email. The next morning at about 9:18am I received an email from Kohler with links to full PDF owner's, parts and service manuals for the engine along with a note to watch out for part numbers that may have been superseded more than once on the 32 year old engine. Obviously this engine was built long before PDFs existed, but this company cared enough about supporting even their old products to scan and archive all that documentation.
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K

Thanks Pete, I'll do just that.

Karl

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K

Follow up. These guys are great. I have a special part number for both rod and pistion and a service bulliten for installation.

Karl

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D

Sounds like you made out OK, but here is one more thing to keep in mind. If Sears ever sold a product with that engine, they probably still stock parts for it. I found this out on the Onan forums. I just ordered upgraded valve guides, seals and intake gaskets for a 1979 Onan CCKA engine. All you have to do is put in the Onan (or Kohler) part number at Sears Parts Direct, they carried over the part numbers from the OEM. And the prices were lower than the sellers on eBay.

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G

Not in Canada. I enquired about parts for the then 22 year old snow blower and the girl laughed in my face. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

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