My Small Engine Projects

It is pretty dirty! A good cleaning up and fresh paint on the shroud would look like new. What about the melted fan?

Yup, I will clean it up. Probably not repaint it but we'll see. I need to replace the fan, it's plastic fins and are separate from the flywheel. 

On another note, got some free stuff today!

A Honda GX200 Power Washer

Chinese leaf blower

Stihl SR400 Leaf blower


They aren't in the best of shape. The leaf blowers have spent there lives blowing out hen houses. The red/orange leaf blower has a strange clank when you turn it over. Am thinking one of the blades has come loose/off.

So I started work on the Stihl, seemed the most likely one to start. Put some fuel down the air inlet, and it started and ran for 2 seconds then stopped and would not restart. There is good compression, and I tried warming up a spark plug but still didn't restart. The spark is ok-ish but I'm thinking it may not be sparking under the compression. I'm going to clean all the mucky stuff off it and take the coil out, clean it, readjust it and try to see if it will run. The coil is at the back, so makes working on it hard. Both blowers came with fullish tanks of fuel which seems to be good. I put some in my hedge cutter and it ran fine.

Make one of the leaf blowers into a turbocharger for the Westwood. 

Nice finds man!  I think that the Stihl shouldn't need much work, Stihl makes very reliable stuff.

Bet it’s the diaphragm on the carb. Those go out on a small 2 stroke engine before anything else typically

The Westwood is not getting turbo'd W

Turns out it was a spark problem, that and the engine was flooded from being repeatedly pulled over. I took off the coil, it and the flywheel were covered in a wet sludge muck of some kind, it must have been allowing some spark but not enough. Anyway, cleaned it all up with a cloth and some fuel. Set the gap, had a bit of a struggle trying to refit the earth and throttle cable clamp but I got it done eventually. Checked for spark and there it was pretty good, put her back together, there's a useful throttle lock to hold the throttle wide open, had to use that coz it was flooded. After a few pulls she fired up and runs quite well. The idle was too high so I turned it down a bit, I think the carb might need a bit of cleaning/adjusting but for now she's running well. There is quite a bit of power with this thing, blows stuff around quite a bit. There's also a tank on the top of the engine to put additive or cleaning fluid in. I'm probably not gonna ever use that so I may remove it.

Nice score . A friend at work gave me a power washer too. He gave it to me because the motor ran great and the water pump didn't pressurize the water. I took a look at the relief valve and one of the springs was rusted beyond use, I had one that was exact and fixed the relief valve Cleaned the carb on the Honda 9 hp and runs great. Bought the hose and sprayer with tips and shoots pressure to 3500 psi.

Nice I got a similar pressure washer and its a clone though of the gx200. It's going on the mini bike.

So the pressure washer runs well, even though the fuel in it smells off. I connected up a water supply and it works, but the pump made quite a bit of noise so I checked the oil level and there's no oil in it. Does anyone know what type of oil I should put in the pump?

MatthewD wrote:

So the pressure runs well, even though the fuel in it smells off. I connected up a water supply and it works, but the pump made quite a bit of noise so I checked the oil level and there's no oil in it. Does anyone know what type of oil I should put in the pump?

Well, they actually make pressure washer oil, I'd try some of that.

Double W Cross Ranch wrote:

MatthewD wrote:

So the pressure runs well, even though the fuel in it smells off. I connected up a water supply and it works, but the pump made quite a bit of noise so I checked the oil level and there's no oil in it. Does anyone know what type of oil I should put in the pump?

Well, they actually make pressure washer oil, I'd try some of that.

Thanks. I did some googling, came up with these

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/112135525878?chn=ps&adgroupid=54300448927&rlsatarget=pla-398490660936&abcId=1130076&adtype=pla&merchantid=110792065&poi=&googleloc=9045209&device=c&campaignid=1029942144&crdt=0

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_11966_11966

Looks like the pump takes SAE 30. I have some 10W40 at home, is that similar enough to SAE 30 or completely different?

It's different.  Not sure how it would affect a small engine, but SAE is 30 weight oil and 10W40 is multi-weight oil.  The SAE30 is consistent viscosity at all temps where the 10W40 is lower at colder temps and changes as it warms up.

I'm talking about the pressure washer pump, but I always use 10w40 in my engines anyway. I went ahead and put some 10W40 into the pump, there already was a little oil in there but not much. The engine was low on oil too so I topped it up. She runs really well, washed my Land Rover with it, did pretty well.

Also had a wee look at that Chinese blower today, took the engine off took apart the blower housing to find out what the clanking noise was. I thought it was something in the blower chamber colliding with the fan but it turns out the bolts holding the fan were loose. This being a chinese copy, it didn't have a lock nut, just two normal ones. I didn't have a lock nut of that thread so I put them back on with some loctite and tightened them up.




Reassembled it and no more noise. Marvellous. I then tried to start it, but it wouldn't go. Checked for spark, and there is a little but not very much. Same story as the Stihl, likely some muck in there stopping a good spark being made. The only thing with this one is the coil is right at the back of the engine, next the blower housing so now I have to take the engine off again, remove the blower housing and fan to get at the coil.

On these small engines, do you gap the coil? Maybe that is off?

Yeah the coil is adjustable. At least, it was on the Stihl. There is a possibility that the gap is off, but I'd say the gap is plugged with the dusty gunk that the engine is covered in.

Two stroke oil mixed with all the dust these things blow around tends to do that. How does the plug look? Excessively oily? Good compression?

SAE 30w oil is a non detergent oil and stays thick under high heat, made just for equipment. It would be a good idea to change the oil to the 30w, the 10w 40 oil is too thin and would wear out the pump bearings quick.

The 30w oil is also called compressor oil too, same thing.

CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

Two stroke oil mixed with all the dust these things blow around tends to do that. How does the plug look? Excessively oily? Good compression?

The plug is very wet, so it points to a spark problem. The compression is quite good actually, better than the Stihl to be honest.

prancstaman wrote:

SAE 30w oil is a non detergent oil and stays thick under high heat, made just for equipment. It would be a good idea to change the oil to the 30w, the 10w 40 oil is too thin and would wear out the pump bearings quick.

The 30w oil is also called compressor oil too, same thing.

Right okay, I will see if I can get some 30W oil. The pressure washer won't be used very often anyway, but I suppose it would be a good idea to change it out.

So I'm working on this Honda 5.5 Clone. There was a rattling noise inside the crankcase when you shook the engine so I opened it up and found these lying at the bottom.


Does anyone know what they are off?

What the heck!  That flat washer and plastic bushing don't belong in there.


That aside it looks pretty good in there.  Is the oil slinger still on the bottom of the crank?

Hmmm, odd. Those aren't for the governor shaft or something are they?

Crazy_Carl wrote:

What the heck!  That flat washer and plastic bushing don't belong in there.


That aside it looks pretty good in there.  Is the oil slinger still on the bottom of the crank?

Yeah, oil slinger is still there, just can't see it on the pic.

AllisKidD21 wrote:

Hmmm, odd. Those aren't for the governor shaft or something are they?

That's what I was thinking, I think that they keep the governor gear from coming off but I'm not sure. Anyway I seem to have lost the plastic piece,  Need to go and find it.

Well no progress on the Honda clone, but I did fix up my bigger air compressor to be able to run the compressed air engine for longer. The bigger air tank definitely helps to keep it running faster but it's still pretty inefficient, so I want to take it apart and modify the camshaft lobes and make sure everythings air tight. Theres no headgasket at the minute, so I'll probably make up a cardboard or rubber one to go on.

For sealing air, I'd go with rubber.  How hot does the head get running on air?

Yeah, might try some tyre tubes or something. The head stays cold and doesn't get hot at all, at least not for the time I've been running it, (5-10 mins). I suppose the continual flow of air keeps the heat from the friction down.

Cool! I'd definitely love to see some more work on the "steamer" engine there, it's a pretty neat project.