Briggs and Stratton 16hp V twin Governor linkage

[woodchucker]

Was out doing leaves today, and my tractor would not come back up from idle to run.
At first I thought the throttle cable sheath slipped. But it was working, but nothing from the round disk to the governor was working. I though there was a hard wire that failed, I see remnants of a u shape. But now I think it might be a spring.

Do any of you have a model 303700 16hp Briggs V Twin diagram of the linkage, and how they connect. 1987 vintage...

Can't get anything on many of the sites. Jacks has some parts, but no breakdown. Appears I gotta pull the engine.. not what I need right now, as it's my mom's 90th this weekend, and we had enough rain that the grass is high.. I have taken over 12 loads of leaves after chopping with the blades , that 12 loads of a large sweeper... so a lot. This year because we were so dry the leaves were falling Sept 1st. We had no color and are halfway through .. amazing.

 

[woodchucker]

Ok, just went back out, and now I see the spring buried in gunk. I'll have to pull the motor to get to it tomorrow maybe. unless I can get a pair of hemostats in there. NEED MORE CARB SPRAY to clean out the heavily caked on crud.

 

[markba633csi]

Sounds like the spring should have some type of retainer wire or similar to keep it from taking flight

 

[woodchucker]

Sounds like the spring should have some type of retainer wire or similar to keep it from taking flight

nope, it fatigued and broke. got it out, and went up the road to a small engine repair shop. He had the part.. $5, it's back together. It was tough to do without taking the engine out, but I got it.. No room to work... grrrrrrr.

 

[markba633csi]

Yay!

 

[matthewsx]

People sometimes gave me grief over the $70/hr rate at my shop.

I was always happy to sell them the part and let them tackle the job themselves.

Glad you got it done

John

 

[woodchucker]

People sometimes gave me grief over the $70/hr rate at my shop.

I was always happy to sell them the part and let them tackle the job themselves.

Glad you got it done

John

yea honestly I don't know how much time you would take, but the 4 bolts holding the throttle control were under the engine, and I don't know why, but they are way longer than they need to be, so it's real dicey at one point I was ready to give up on getting the screws back in, as my finger was too big to fit the small area to hold the screw up and it was just FUGLY. And one screw would not allow me to use my ratcheting box wrench..
Taking the motor out would have been easy to do the job, but then taking the motor out becomes a job.

 

[matthewsx]

I was a Briggs dealer so I would have had the flat rate book for warranty times. Pretty likely it would have taken longer than that though, even more if my employee hadn't ever done it before.

My policy was simple, half hour minimum and $35 diagnosis fee paid up front. If it only took 1/2 hr then you were done for labor, if longer the diagnosis fee applied to the total. I didn't charge for my "head scratching time" I figured I should know how to do the work since the sign outside said "repair".

I didn't start out with the minimum but I figured out pretty quick that guys would bring me junk they picked up off the side of the road and tell me it just needed the carb cleaned. Then when my guys figured out it was completely worn out the customer often wouldn't want to pay anything since we couldn't fix it. Not only that, they wouldn't buy a new one from me preferring to shop Home Depot for a $10 savings.

I learned a lot about people, I was honest but got really tired of folks talking about how some shop "ripped them off" for just charging a fair price for the work done. Often I would spend more time than the repair would have taken to explain to a customer how to do the repair that I just sold them a $4 part for.

Small town, I knew I'd see you at the grocery store or the bar and wanted to hear how you were able to get your machine working with my help.

John

 

[woodchucker]

since I can do the job, I do. When I can't I will give it to the guys. My problem is down time. If I send it to a guy, it could be weeks before he has time.

Right now it's leaf time, been for a few weeks. I can't rake it by hand, just too big. Leaf blowers are a pain to corral them. Also I don't have a place to dump them, so my neighbor lets me use his woods (the edge), both of us dump there and then he'll take his kubota and create a mulch pit that he turns over to cook the mulch for his wife's gardens.
I can't be taking a hundred loads over, so I use the mower to chop up most of the leaves so the number of trips is about 1/8 of un chopped leaves. Saves on trips to his drop area which is a bit to get to.

 

[matthewsx]

Yep, everyone waits until last minute. Of course your mower died while using it but the wait you're talking about is mostly folks who could have brought in their machine anytime during the spring or summer.

Leaves are a major pain, on our little village lot we had 3 maples so it was always a struggle to get them up before the snow flew. Don't have that problem anymore, actually don't have any trees where we live now.

Leaves do make great mulch though. Anyone who can just mow over their leaves in the fall should do it, the lawn will thank you....

John