Well, my carburated cars would turn over and start properly. It's just that cold weather running required a lot of 'foot nursing' on the skinny pedal to keep them from konking out until they were warm enough to effectively vaporize fuel. It took a couple minutes at most but it was still an irritation.
I *love* fuel injection.
--Winston
My neighbor has a new pressure washer with a B&S 190cc engine with ReadyStart that's a beast to start. He said it was a customer return so it may have been defective from the factory. I waved my magic hands over it and got it running for him, twice, but don't know exactly which of the many tricks I tried actually worked.
The B&S site just lists all the standard checks like the plug and air filter and put in new gas. I topped up the oil though it doesn't seem to have a low-oil shutoff. Do those things have any common failure modes?
If it were mine I'd pull it all apart to look for anything broken or clogged. I don't want to risk his warranty.
He's a skilled carpenter but has bad luck with things mechanical. While he was showing me his expensive new hose nozzle the plastic core broke and blew out.
The horses have shrunk down. I think what they were calling a 5 hp was practically identical to what they sold as 3.5 hp for 50 years. There was a Nationwide class action lawsuit against B&S. As a consequence they no longer use hp ratings. They are rated by torque.
-jim
Now they are just trying to torque us off! ;-)
Someone's numbers are from careful observation of their mileage on their own vehicle and from their own pocketbook. I lost 12% in gas mileage when Oregon switched to E10. That means they're selling 12% more gas than they were, and making an extra profit on it.
The only cites I've seen say 10%, but I'd like to see your cite for
5%, clare.-- Woe be to him that reads but one book. -- George Herbert
Ethanol has half the calorific value of gasoline, so 10% ethanol means 5% loss of energy - so if the vehicle is properly set up you lose 5% in mileage with E10 - and that's about what I'm finding.
Now, if your E10 is modified with other contaminants as well, you will perhaps lose more. And since "gasoline" is not a defined product, with a specific chemical formula or makeup, you can get a lot more difference between different brands/mixes/local formulations than the difference between "straight" and "E10" gasolines.
Now, if you are running E10 on an engine that is not calibrated for it, that engine will run LEAN, and possibly loose more power than the
5% calorie deficit would indiicate - but that would require a carbureted or pre-obd type injected engine, as all the current (since 1996) engines adjust the mixture enough to compensate for E10 in the mixture.
The REASON they now sell by torque is the HP rating was at 3600 RPM, and with the safely regulations today most lawn mowers are running their engines BELOW that speed - many only 2400 RPM A 6 hp motor at 3600 rpm is 8.75 ft lbs of torque. At 2400 RPM that's only something like 4 HP.
Briggs was perfectly happy with using horsepower to rate their engines until they lost 51 million dollars in lawsuits because of proven false claims regarding horsepower rating. The courts ordered Briggs (and other small engine companies) to use the SAE standards for torque or horsepower as determined by an independent test facility for any claims they make. Previously the companies were just making up power ratings as they saw fit.
After the court order Briggs quit giving horsepower ratings entirely rather than put the much lower hp rating back on the same engines as the court order would have required.
Briggs took what for 50 years they called a 3.5 horsepower and simply lied and labeled it as a 5 or 6 horsepower. Then when they got caught they didn't want their fraud to be widely known so they came up with a story that horsepower is a lousy way to rate engines and torque is a much better way to rate small engines.
From what I've read / heard, you are blowing more smoke than a 15 year old Briggs. Yes, the manufacturers were sued - but they were not NECESSARILY deceptive in their ratings. The engines WERE rated at a given stated RPM - and if run at that RPM with the torque ratings currently on the engines they WOULD produce (in most cases) the advertized horsepower.
If you take the torque available at whatever RPM the engine is run at and multiply the two, then devide by 5252, you get the horsepower.
Look at the Torque rating of any engine out there today, and multiply it by 3600, then devide by 5252, and you will find the result is extremely close to the HP the engine was formerly advertized/sold with.
The ONLY engine description that cannot be argued is DISPLACEMENT - which is more and more becoming the standard way to advertize small engines. This rating still does not tell you a whole lot, because the power differs greatly depending on the engine design. Your weed eater, leaf blower, chain-saw etc will have a 30cc, 35cc, or 40cc etc engine., which may be producing , say 5HP from 40cc at 6000 RPM. (4 ft lbs of torque at 6000 RPM - being a 2 stroke engine) Your lawnmower may have a 135 cc or 8.24 cubic inches 4 stroke- roughly 3.5HP at 3600 RPM.. A 5HP L-Head Briggs was 12.5 cubic inches, or 204 cc. The same displacement OHV Intek engine is a 6.5HP engine at the same 3600 RPM due to higher volumetric efficiency and higher compression ratio. This translates to about 9.5 ft lbs torque at 3600 RPM - and the engine LIKELY produces a peak torque of about11 ft lb at 2400 RPM (5 HP), while the L- Head 5HP engine likely produced a peak HP of about 9.5ft lb at 2400, for a HP of about 4.25, and 7.2 ft lbs at 3600, for the
5HP rating.The torque drops off with speed due to poor breathing (volumetric efficiency) - the carting guys tune the intakes and exhausts to improve the efficiency, which increases the torque at higher speeds - producing more HP.
If your 15 year old briggs blows smoke its probably from bad maintenance.
The US federal court doesn't agree with you. It was deceptive advertising
The engines WERE rated at a given stated
So how did a 3.5 horsepower engine get turned into a 6 hp engine?
Your claiming they did it by making it run slower which is nonsense. They did it by slapping a 6 hp label on it.
That mumbo mumbo doesn't explain how they turned a 3.5 engine into a 6 hp when the only real difference was a fancy plastic shroud on the exterior.
And yes the current torque ratings are accurate, but you can't compare to what the engine used to be rated at, because they didn't give torque ratings before.
Horse power ratings are now required to be done by dyno testing random engines off the assembly line. They can't just do some silly calculations and call it a 6 hp engine. Briggs won't tell you what the current hp rating is.
Not true. Their HP ratings are/were SAE spec dyno ratings. The 6HP engine was larger displacement than the 3.5 Try buying pistons and cranks. The 3.5HP L-Head was 148cc The 6HP OHV Vangard was 182cc, the 6HP Intek 190cc, and the 6HP Quantum was 189.6 cc (lets just call it 190)
That has little to do with the fraud that Briggs was sued over. The case started in the Illinois courts in 2003 against MTD and Briggs MTD caved in and settled then MTD gave evidence against Briggs In 2008 it was moved into federal court as a class action At about the same time Fraud and RICO charges were filed against Briggs and most of the other small engine mfgs. In 2010 Briggs agreed to settle for 51 million.
The horsepower misrepresentation that Briggs and other small engine makers engaged in occurred from 1994-2008 the misrepresentations ended when Briggs stopped using hp ratings
So their torque ratings are more to be trusted than their HP? Why? IF it WAS actually fraud, it is just as easy to misrepresent torque. Any of the numbers I've seen, torque vs HP, work out REAL close.
(at 3600 RPM) The only reason it could have been construed as fraudulent would be if the rated RPM was higher than the operating RPM
- which it has been since 1996 or there-abouts. The 6HP engine was only 4.5 or 5 because it didn't run at it's rated RPM.
Heck, Ed, I've done that.
It burns hot and sparkles a lot.
But it takes a LOT of C4 to heat anything. It's gone so fast it doesn't have much time to transfer heat.
What I want to know is, who was the first guy to try this? Here in NJ we have these big myths about the first guy to eat a tomato. But I would think that the first guy to heat his coffee over flaming C4 deserves a statue somewhere, doesn't he?
Or a line on his headstone, "Here, hold my beer and watch this..."
The standard way to dispose of old dynamite is to burn it out in the open, in small quantities. From a distance.
Joe Gwinn
"Distance" being an important point in this case. That's how I get rid of ancient gunpowder, too. That is, I did, until I realized that it was probably a good addition to my compost pile. 'Too bad I don't shoot black powder anymore. There is some Red Dot on the compost pile right now, however.
Yes their torque ratings are more to be trusted, but only because their previous misrepresentation had made their horsepower rating highly suspect. Since they have been under court order to only put on the label what an independent SAE tester determines is the power rating briggs has not revealed the horsepower ratings. So if they came out real close for you it's because your calculations made them come out real close.
I own a lawnmower that I bought new in 2002. It has the same block, piston, crank, valves as what used to be called a 3.5 hp. It had a label on the shroud that said 5.5 hp. According to the lawsuit Briggs also labeled that same basic engine as a 4hp, 4.5hp, 5hp, and 6hp engine.
Read the court documents. It has nothing to do with RPM. It has nothing to do with safety or emissions. They simply changed the external appearance of some engines and labeled them as having more horsepower. The 3.5 is the only specific engine size that I remember, but there was a number of different larger engines where they did similar misrepresentations . And other small engine makers were in on it also. But it sounds like Briggs was the first and most egregious violator.
They got caught and one of the consequences was they discontinued using horsepower ratings and now use torque ratings.
No. horsepower and torque are directly related. If they tell you the torque rating anyone can determine the HP rating, knowing the running RPM.
Well the 3.5 hp engine on my little mower (about 2006) IS DEFINITELY NOT the same as my neighbour's 4HP, and the 6 at the airport is totally different again.
Gunner Asch on Sat, 14 May 2011 10:37:33 -0700 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
Or frozen.
I remember a movie with that plot line - they needed to blast something, and the only dynamite they had, had been in a mine shaft forever, and some had sweated. And the road wasn't paved. The trucks needed new shocks. And then the rains came. I don't know if the natives were hostile ... but ...
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