gman4dx266
Forum Newbie
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2020
- Threads
- 3
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- 6
Hello everyone. So I wanted to share my latest project because I think you guys will get a kick out of it. I bought this Cub Cadet LTX1045 for $200 this past weekend. It was for sale for parts. Owner said the engine started knocking bad and he shut it down before it made the big bang. Mower has only 34hrs on it, and looks like it too.
I brought it home and even cranking with the starter you hear something hitting. Initial inspection of the outside didn't reveal any cracks so I popped the top off to look inside. It was very apparent once I saw inside - the cast aluminum link that connects the crankshaft to the counterweight blew apart. It appeared the bolts backed out and it slung it into something else. These things are bad about bolts coming loose anyways. The bottom weight link had both bolts only finger tight so I'm pretty sure that was the root cause. It exploded the governor too.
So as luck would have it, people want an arm and leg for parts for the courage engines because they're so failure prone. I had another motor behind the house I could have put on here but I decided to see what I could do with this one first.
I took all the counterbalance weight stuff out and ran the motor. It ran decent at mid to high rpm but vibrated pretty bad at lower rpm. At that point, I pulled the crank and the piston out and set it all up to find how much it needed to balance it. It came out to 363 grams to balance the rotating assembly. I had small cut off pieces of plate so I weighed them as close as I could get and welded them on to the crank opposite the piston, where normal bob-weights would be on any other crankshaft. I ended up having to do some test fitment and minor trimming to get it to clear the bottom of the cylinder and the intake camshaft, so I am probably still a little on the light side as far as the amount of weight it should have. Tossed a new cover gasket and governor in it, loctited all the bolts and filled it up with oil. Then I mowed my back yard! Watch it last forever now LOL I wish I could post the video of it running.
I brought it home and even cranking with the starter you hear something hitting. Initial inspection of the outside didn't reveal any cracks so I popped the top off to look inside. It was very apparent once I saw inside - the cast aluminum link that connects the crankshaft to the counterweight blew apart. It appeared the bolts backed out and it slung it into something else. These things are bad about bolts coming loose anyways. The bottom weight link had both bolts only finger tight so I'm pretty sure that was the root cause. It exploded the governor too.
So as luck would have it, people want an arm and leg for parts for the courage engines because they're so failure prone. I had another motor behind the house I could have put on here but I decided to see what I could do with this one first.
I took all the counterbalance weight stuff out and ran the motor. It ran decent at mid to high rpm but vibrated pretty bad at lower rpm. At that point, I pulled the crank and the piston out and set it all up to find how much it needed to balance it. It came out to 363 grams to balance the rotating assembly. I had small cut off pieces of plate so I weighed them as close as I could get and welded them on to the crank opposite the piston, where normal bob-weights would be on any other crankshaft. I ended up having to do some test fitment and minor trimming to get it to clear the bottom of the cylinder and the intake camshaft, so I am probably still a little on the light side as far as the amount of weight it should have. Tossed a new cover gasket and governor in it, loctited all the bolts and filled it up with oil. Then I mowed my back yard! Watch it last forever now LOL I wish I could post the video of it running.