I am going to have a heart to heart talk with the neighbor, He bought this John Deere used a few years ago after he tied up the engine on a Husqvarna tractor with a Briggs on it also due to lack of oil and general maintenance. I would have thought he would have learned his lesson from that disaster.
He told me he had been adding oil, but when I told him it needed oil badly he didn't have any oil on site, i had to run home and grab a 5 quart bottle. I actually grabbed one that only had 16 oz in it and a full 5 qt,,,added the 16 oz and I thought I would see some oil on the dip stick and did not, added 32 oz from the new bottle in several pour and measures...and could see just a tiny bit on the end of the dip stick filled it till it it showed full. when he began to run it the white smoke of death spewed from it. First thing I did was drain and measure the oil and I got maybe 28-30 oz tops out of it, there was lots of oil on the muffler guard and lots of oil on the ground on the side of the number 1 head. Left side when standing in front of the carb,
I am going to show him the process of removing all that needs to be removed to get to the cylinder heads, the cost of the head gaskets and the potential for further major breakdowns based on the considerable abuse it has suffered and recommend that he cut his losses. As much as I like to fix something that is a new to me process, this sounds like throwing good money after bad,
Thanks to everyone for your input,
what I read on- line was 1.9 liters i.e. 2 quarts. I kept looking for oil on the dipstick as I was adding more and more oil and wasn’t seeing anything. I know new clean oil is hard to see on the dipstick sometimes so I was afraid I was not seeing it and was initially concerned that I was going to overfill it!