Repairing 11.5hp rusty briggs

Hey fella's. I sure appreciate all the great help I have gotten here. I am hoping to get the engine bolted back on tonight and at least give her a squirt of fuel in the spark plug hole to see if she breathes fire again. If so, I'll post some pictures or a video.
Thanks again. I have been reading lot's of good posts on this forum and it has greatly helped me expand my limited knowledge of small engines.
Cudo's to all the contributors here.
Ken

I got her to fire off after squirting some carb cleaner into the spark plug hole, so I figured I have good compression and spark.


Then I bolted the cleaned (Not rebuilt) carb back on, attached the gas tank and tried to start...Nada...Nothing... I even tried squirting more carb cleaner in the spark plug hole and now she is dead... Stll have spark.
I am sort of at a loss now. I am thinking the carb is crap. It is a Niki and although I ultrasonically cleaned it, she isn't pumping air and fuel like she should. I pulled the starter rope 30 or 40 times and couldn't get her to fire off.

I ordered a new carburetor. It was cheaper than the dang rebuild kit!
Any suggestions on what else I can check?
Again, thanks in advance for all the great advice!
Ken

Tinkerer200 said:

The link you furnished did not work however I did find such an engine and it specified cast iron cylinder liner which is contrary to the traditional Power Built engines which were aluminum bore. I have never seen nor heard of a Power Built OHV engine before.

Walt Conner

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KenS said:

I got her to fire off after squirting some carb cleaner into the spark plug hole, so I figured I have good compression and spark.

Then I bolted the cleaned (Not rebuilt) carb back on, attached the gas tank and tried to start...Nada...Nothing... I even tried squirting more carb cleaner in the spark plug hole and now she is dead... Stll have spark.
I am sort of at a loss now. I am thinking the carb is crap. It is a Niki and although I ultrasonically cleaned it, she isn't pumping air and fuel like she should. I pulled the starter rope 30 or 40 times and couldn't get her to fire off.

I ordered a new carburetor. It was cheaper than the dang rebuild kit!
Any suggestions on what else I can check?
Again, thanks in advance for all the great advice!
Ken

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Nice, well done and thanks for sharing vid with us ! Looks good so far.

About carbs, was you able to fully disassemble all the part ? Flush all passages with carb cleaner and perhaps even small wire into the jet ?
Some old fuel tend to really be hard to remove.

As I learned on this forum, some cheap carb are crap and even does not run at all. Sometimes the works fine or not that bad, it's a gamble. Never tried a lot of them, only bought one cheap for a 168F (Gx160/200 clone) engine, as it originally was a cheap carb I put again a cheap one (10 bucks) that work ok.
When I have a Briggs or an Honda engine, I prefer to rebuild the carb with a kit if it is in a decent shape. Sound a bit silly because as you say the rebuild kit is more expensive, but at least you still have your correctly manufactured carb that passed OEM test when he was new.

Thanks, Mkala.
I got the new carburetor bolted on and she fired right up. It runs great so far.

I'm going to get her all cleaned up and list her on Craigslist. Some people just love these snappers. I don't. The turning radius on this one sucks! I also don't like the fact that I can't run the blade while going in reverse. It never really seemed to cut that well either. The deck doesn't have any side wheels on it and every time I turned as sharp as she would go, it would scalp the grass on one side.

I am glad I tore into her. I learned a lot. I appreciate all the help I have gotten here. Now onto the next project.

Ken

Nice, project well handled and quickly !
It's good now it run fine, so sometimes cheap carb works fine (at least yours and mine - but that's only two in the big pile of sh* :laughing: )

Sure someone will be happy with. And as your say always interesting and fun to turn wrenches and learn something.

Yes this forum is nice and I often find very good advices.
Hope you share with us your next engine project :smile: