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I have a John Deere GX 345 with a 20 hp liquid cooled engine FD611V That us smoking. I pulled the exhaust off and it is puffing out if the right cylinder. It doesn't smoke till the engine starts to heat up. The oil was thinned down with gas. I changed the oil and filter, which seemed to help. Just trying to figure if it's a head gasket or valves. The mower was a freebie just wondering if it's worth saving.

Welcome to LawnMowerForum!

I moved your thread to the John Deere Forum. :smile:

You didn't say what condition the rest of the tractor is in? A John Deere GX 345 is a good HD tractor and sold for around 8000 dollars when it was new. I would say unless the tractor is ready for the salvage yard it sure is worth fixing. It sounds to me like maybe runing it with gas in the oil you might have scored a clynder wall. If this is the case have it bored and install a new piston. Can't be too bad of a job. You are looking some where in the neighbor hood of 500 to 600 hundred dollars to fix it yourself.

The mower is in good shape, other than the smoke. The smoke has the smell of gas not oil almost like its flooding. I pulled the bowl and cleans it, that helped. It will run for 3 to 5 min before it starts to smoke. I first thought it was from oil buildup in the muffler. Its not.

If it is runing rich all it needs is a carburetor cleaning , a repair kit and readjusted. It would be worth a new carburetor if you didn't want to mess with the old carburetor.

Allenwiley said:

I have a John Deere GX 345 with a 20 hp liquid cooled engine FD611V That us smoking. I pulled the exhaust off and it is puffing out if the right cylinder. It doesn't smoke till the engine starts to heat up. The oil was thinned down with gas. I changed the oil and filter, which seemed to help. Just trying to figure if it's a head gasket or valves. The mower was a freebie just wondering if it's worth saving.

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I agree with raynoldston it is worth fixing. You could also do a compression test on both cyIinders to do a comparison. This should give an indication of how big the damage is
Regards
PJ

I replaced the head gasket and that seem to have fixed the problem. I mowed 2 acres with no smoke and no problems. Now i need to find a snow bade, or figure a way to convert a 1971 44inch blade from a simplicity. thanks for the advice.