Kohler Courage single cylinder engines.

[Auto Doc's]

Beware of these engines, especially used. Kohler only showed they had the "courage" to build them to self-destruct.

Valve cover leaks.

The top cover bolts under the flywheel fan shroud loosen at under 100 hours on average. Some break off while other will contact the flywheel bottom side while running.

And the "final nail in the coffin" is the engine block will stress crack on the top right and leak oil constantly.

 

[Scrubcadet10]

Yep, the SV models have been beat to death on forums.
The cause of the crack in the block is the flywheel striking the bolts. Kohler China remedied this by adding loctite.
I will say my Courage has been a good engine, other than the carburetor needing rebuilt.

 

[ILENGINE]

Yep, the SV models have been beat to death on forums.
The cause of the crack in the block is the flywheel striking the bolts. Kohler China remedied this by adding loctite.
I will say my Courage has been a good engine, other than the carburetor needing rebuilt.

Yep, they are still trying to beat the SV singles to death because of a few engines that had mistorqued top cover bolts, without locktite, and a few that broke the counterweight alignment rod which would break the bottom of the block dumping the oil. Later versions had gone 700-1000 hours easily. Anybody hear about failures on the 5400 series engines that was also a bucket style engine that replaced the SV singles. Didn't hear about those bolts coming loose or cracking the block.

Anybody remember the TH Triad DOHC engines. Seems nobody talks about that engine. The one were the timing belt cavity would fill full of debris damaging the belt, and required a debris eliminator hole on the bottom of the cover below the crankshaft pulley. Or if the engine overheated it would slide the steel cylinder liner down until the top piston ring would get above the liner and then the downward motion of the piston would drag the liner down into the crankcase resulting in it breaking both rods.. And Kohler paid for the Triad to Command conversion in Walker and Grasshopper mowers.

 

[Tiger Small Engine]

Beware of these engines, especially used. Kohler only showed they had the "courage" to build them to self-destruct.

Valve cover leaks.

The top cover bolts under the flywheel fan shroud loosen at under 100 hours on average. Some break off while other will contact the flywheel bottom side while running.

And the "final nail in the coffin" is the engine block will stress crack on the top right and leak oil constantly.

Also had starter issues. Also need to check the engine mounting bolts for tightness. Be sure to pull engine shroud and check top bolt bolts for tightness and that eliminates potential destruction down the road.

The Kohler Courage engines have given Kohler kind of a black eye I believe. Kohler, now Relko, makes a great engine, but the Courage has had some problems.