John Deere 14SE Push Mower with Kawasaki Governor trouble.

[Diesel_Dude08]

Hello, I have a John Deere 14SE push mower with a Kawasaki FC150V. I got it a few years ago but havent had too much time to mess with it. it used to start and run, but it would SCREAM at like 20,000 RPM it seemed. A few months ago I did a static governor adjustment and adjusted the throttle cables and made sure the butterfly and everything opened and closed as far as it should. I started the mower and it didn't scream, it ran pretty low RPM. I would go to throttle it up or down and the throttle plate would move, but it wouldn't actually move the governor arm. It would run constant rpm no matter where I moved the throttle lever. Adjusting the High idle screw did nothing. The only time it would throtle down is when it got to basically idle. However, if I would bump the governor manually with my finger it would rev up then slow down more. Today I finally pulled the sump off to look at the governor and it was not destroyed and seemed to be working properly. I went to put the crankcase cover back on and I snapped one of the bolts.... of course. I have a video of what it was doing after I adjusted it, but unfortunatley I can not insert it below. If anyone has any ideas and could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your time!
-Cody

 

[CraigH]

I had a similar issue to this last year, mowing the lawn and the engine just suddenly starts revving flat out, stopped the mower and checked everything over (not very well apparently), couldn't find anything wrong so assumed it was the governor, this was after resetting the governor and then adjusting in both directions with no change to the engine revving.
I stripped the engine down to find absolutely nothing wrong inside, all reassembled and same problem, so I took the carb off and gave it a thorough clean and reinstalled it with new gaskets, problem solved instantly and it runs just as good as before. Not sure if I dislodged some crap in the carb while mowing or if a gasket suddenly decided to let a tiny bit of air past.

 

[Tiger Small Engine]

Your governor, after static adjustment, is running as it should. In the second question from CraigH. Governors don’t simply magically fix themselves after cleaning a carburetor. Most likely you had some linkage in a bind. After removing, cleaning, and reinstalling carb correctly, engine is running at correct RPM.

 

[CraigH]

Your governor, after static adjustment, is running as it should. In the second question from CraigH. Governors don’t simply magically fix themselves after cleaning a carburetor. Most likely you had some linkage in a bind. After removing, cleaning, and reinstalling carb correctly, engine is running at correct RPM.

That was my thoughts on my problem, though I did wonder about an air leak on a gasket.
Either way, it's all working good now and has been for a few months so can't complain, and I'm calling it a lesson learnt in not jumping to conclusions without full and proper investigation as it cost me £50 and a good few hours for absolutely no reason and I could have potentially had it fixed the same day it went wrong for nothing.