That ain't a problem with the engine, that's a problem with the carburetor... likely something a couple wrenches, a screw driver, some torch-tip cleaners, and an hour can't fix.
thoughts and expieriences on chinese engines
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That ain't a problem with the engine, that's a problem with the carburetor... likely something a couple wrenches, a screw driver, some torch-tip cleaners, and an hour can't fix.
RiverRocket
ArboristSite Guru
Buy AMERICAN.........
Rudolf73
Addicted to ArboristSite
The small honda engines are now made in China, some are still assembled in Japan and hence they can still use the "Made in Japan" sticker. I have used various chonda engines in the past 5 years without any issues - like someone mentioned before they are great value for money.
If you want a high quality small engine go with a Subaru/Robin, they are still made in Japan.
If you want a high quality small engine go with a Subaru/Robin, they are still made in Japan.
philoshop
Addicted to ArboristSite
I was racing karts 5 years ago and got into the "clone-class" with three other guys just to keep racing. Damn expensive otherwise.
We all went to HF and bought their chonda 6.5 hp motors. $130 each. Three of us have since retired and put those motors to other use. One is still racing. He has built the snot outta that motor and races it like hes trying to kill it, which he is, and it just keeps running. Every weekend, 5 months a year, 4 years, say an hour and a half each week run-time, turning 6500+ rpm for 20 minutes at a time, flat out. He's trying to kill it so he can justify a $1500 motor to the wife. 5th season coming up.
I buy US when I can, but sometimes...
We all went to HF and bought their chonda 6.5 hp motors. $130 each. Three of us have since retired and put those motors to other use. One is still racing. He has built the snot outta that motor and races it like hes trying to kill it, which he is, and it just keeps running. Every weekend, 5 months a year, 4 years, say an hour and a half each week run-time, turning 6500+ rpm for 20 minutes at a time, flat out. He's trying to kill it so he can justify a $1500 motor to the wife. 5th season coming up.
I buy US when I can, but sometimes...
Like everything else parts for Briggs are sourced all over the world. there was a time when everything was made here for them. I live by and drive past 3 different Briggs plants everyday. The main plant here is a shadow of its former self. The casting plant was sold years ago and right now is owned Harley Davidson. Briggs built a very large building recently in the area , I'm told it just a distribution point. I had friends working for them back in the day, lot of in fighting between management and unions. Lot of shady employment practices were going on such as 19.5 hours a week( anything under 20/wk considered part time so no insurance pension ect.) long time employees let go just before being fully vested for pension. Terminations of full time employees for questionable reasons was rampant. Quality control slid to the bottom of heap. Govt/epa didn't help with rules on volatile emissions, although Briggs was really bad on that over at the main plant in the 70's back then the main plant covered about 1/2 a sq. mile. I also remember Briggs #####ing about the influx of the Hondas and the like which at the time were under cutting them price wise, part of what they said were true other sections they brought on themselves. Tecumseh plants are all gone now also. Kohler still around, Wisconsin gone.
jthornton
ArboristSite Guru
Briggs and Stratton are not gone by any stretch of the imagination. They have the worlds most efficient small engine plant right here in my back yard and are in the process of investing $3.4 million dollars in expansion and reconfiguration of the assembly lines. IIRC this plant is also the worlds largest small engine plant in production at one facility. Their quality is the best I've seen and they constantly work at improving both quality and efficiency. They cast their own aluminum parts and the plastic parts are made locally. The crankshaft line is something to see as well as the cam department. The big difference between this plant and plants in the north are the work force and management work hard at making engines efficiently and don't spend time pointing fingers at each other.
If only they made horizontal shaft engines at this plant...
I've also seen some of the junk production machines that came from Milwaukee and you can just see that there was no happy people there.
John
If only they made horizontal shaft engines at this plant...
I've also seen some of the junk production machines that came from Milwaukee and you can just see that there was no happy people there.
John
I sure hope their good engines, I just bought a predator generator. It does start easy and is quiet. Haven't run it much yet. But for 289 bucks i had to try it.
Really ?? Where do I do that, and what do I buy ??
I just bought a walk-behind mower this spring with a Briggs & Stratton, it has a "Torch" brand spark plug in it (Chinese made... a "state" owned company). I stopped at the fleet store yesterday to pick up some spare parts for maintenance inventory (plug, air filter, fuel filter, etc.). Every part I looked at in a Briggs & Stratton package said "Made in China" or "Product of China".
There ain't anything "American" anymore... we simply bolt together parts shipped here from somewhere else and slap a "Made in America" sticker on it. And we ain't the only ones... start taking a close look at those Jap products (such as Honda engines)... you're gonna find parts on them that say "Made in China".
Twenty, maybe fifteen years ago, the "Made in America" sticker and the "BUY AMERICAN!" idea meant something... now it's just a huge joke. I stopped foolin' myself ten years ago! Now I look-out for myself... I put my money where it returns the most-for-the-least... sometimes that means paying a bit more, sometimes not... sometime that means it will have a bogus "Made in America" sticker, sometimes not.
Yep, everything you pick up now is foreign made and mostly china. Most of the American companies outsource stuff so they can compete on prices. Go buy a Harley motorcycle part and see where it is made.
jthornton
ArboristSite Guru
The spark plug and the air filter might be made in china but the cylinder, sump, crank, piston, the head and all the plastic parts are made here in Poplar Bluff and the carburetors are made in the Murry Ky Briggs plant.
John
John
Well... you can even take that a little further...
If you look real close, some of the stuff from China will have parts or pieces on them with a "Made in the U.S.A." label... not a lot mind you, but some.
If you look real close, some of the stuff from China will have parts or pieces on them with a "Made in the U.S.A." label... not a lot mind you, but some.
Sorry, but that ain't true on every B&S engine, probably true on some of the more expensive "pro" engines and such... at twice the price.
My last walk-behind had a B&S with some sort of "plastic" cast carburetor, and stamped right in the side of it was "Made in China"! The darn thing backfired and caught fire... the carb melted before I could get it put out, L-O-L! I just rebuilt the carb on my Briggs-powered garden tiller last spring... every single part came separately (no "kit" available) with "Product of China" on the package (except the o-rings). Yesterday at the fleet store I was looking at the lawn tractors (I always open the hoods to see what engine is used)... one Briggs on a cheaper model had a plastic shroud over it with "Made in China" molded right into it. Last summer I rebuilt the top end of my Harley Davidson golf cart (cylinder, piston and rings)... the cylinder was a re-bore, the fitted piston and rings came from China.
Briggs & Stratton markets several dozen models of engine, with dozens of different configurations withing those models (some of them proprietary to particular applications by other companies), and they sell them world-wide. No way they make "all" of anything right here in the good ol' U.S. of A.
Here's something you might find interesting...
In 2007, Briggs closed its engine plant in Rolla, Mo., and shifted half of that plant's production to a plant it opened in China!
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Arbonaut
Go Climb It
Thomas Skidsteers used to be the best on the market. Made in Canada then. If your kids want to work there now, I hope they are in management.
Briggs had a real management problem for quite awhile. It showed in the products, and that is what allowed their competitors to gain so much market share. Doesn't pay to be so smug as they found out. Some of the plants here were quite old, difficult and very expensive to convert to new EPA, OSHA and other regulatory requirements. This scenario is not limited to Briggs but applies to all of US mfg.
LarryRFL
ArboristSite Operative
The only time I would worry about Chinese OPE is with generators. A lot of them are imported and sold by companies that close down or change names. Engines are fine, but generator parts (especially capacitors or voltage regulators). Any other application with these engines aren't really a problem.
brenndatomu
Hey you woodchucks, quit chucking my wood!
A true Made-in-the-USA product is rare. If you do the research, often times things are assembled here with imported parts and/or assembled by "imports" which is fine if they are legal. I mean heck, most of us in the US are descendants of imports right?
Gotta love the sneaky marketing people that figured out if they slap a USA flag on the package, most people won't look close enough to see the "assembled in" or other fine print. :msp_unsure: I seen something recently that said the word America real big, had to look close to see the "assembled in north AMERICA"...as in Mexico!!! SNEAKY SNEAKY SNEAKY!
I wonder what the guys that have a good union job on the docks do when they are faced with this situation, a special kind of dilemma for them!
I heard somewhere recently that the, I think it was the Toyota Camry, has the highest USA parts content. Shame on Ford/Chevy/Dodge!
I for one try to buy American, but sometimes (often) it just doesn't make sense and/or there is more to it then an American name on the package.
Someone already brought up the Stihl thing, I wonder how many of us drive something other than one of the big 3? I know, I know, most of them are built here. Heck, I have a Honda Goldwing, made in Marysville Ohio. (was, back in Japan now) Rambling done...
Gotta love the sneaky marketing people that figured out if they slap a USA flag on the package, most people won't look close enough to see the "assembled in" or other fine print. :msp_unsure: I seen something recently that said the word America real big, had to look close to see the "assembled in north AMERICA"...as in Mexico!!! SNEAKY SNEAKY SNEAKY!
I wonder what the guys that have a good union job on the docks do when they are faced with this situation, a special kind of dilemma for them!
I heard somewhere recently that the, I think it was the Toyota Camry, has the highest USA parts content. Shame on Ford/Chevy/Dodge!
I for one try to buy American, but sometimes (often) it just doesn't make sense and/or there is more to it then an American name on the package.
Someone already brought up the Stihl thing, I wonder how many of us drive something other than one of the big 3? I know, I know, most of them are built here. Heck, I have a Honda Goldwing, made in Marysville Ohio. (was, back in Japan now) Rambling done...
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I'm like Mac88, I have a bunch of old stuff. Most of my chainsaws are old Homelites we bought back in the 70's. They got commercial use for at least 20 years till my Dad retired in the early 90's. Then we used a lot of Poulan XXV's and Echo's, then a few Stihls. I still use 2 of the Super 1050's for milling, an XL 924 and XL 700. I've got too many irons in the fire to get one project finished. I have 2 old wood splitters, both with Kohlers. One is an early 60's Lickity Split splitter. I want to restore it 100% original, just for the hydraulic technology in it. It has 2 stage hydraulics in stead of a 2 stage pump. The other splitter was one a friend made. It had an electric start 12 horse Kohler. We got it running and it was a bear, would cut anything we put on it. Let another friend borrow it, bad move. I told him the first friend, who built the machine, put a way under sized hydraulic tank on it (2 gallon) and not to run it for more than a half hour. He ran it for about 4 hours straight and cooked the pump, then it sat outside for a year or so, now the Kohler won't start. I just wanted one new component on the thing to get started on fixing it. I can't afford to rebuild the Kohler, and I think a short block was like $750. I bought the little 6.5 Predator and a pump bracket for less than a $125 total. Now I can work on it "now" and not have to wait till I can afford it. The 6.5 was a band aid to stop the money bleeding. Once I get the thing straightened out I'm going back to the electric start Kohler. Then I'll have the cheepie 6.5 to mock up some other project, maybe my $75 JD Gator with no motor. Let's see how it goes, Joe.
jthornton
ArboristSite Guru
Well that is just not true, I helped install the equipment from Rolla here in Poplar Bluff. What they sent to China was an engine that was produced very little and that engine was produced in the Poplar Bluff plant. They closed Rolla for the same reason the Milwaukee went down the tubes it cost too much to build an engine there.
The engines made here and in Murry Ky are not the more expensive engines but lawn mower and pressure washer vertical shaft motors. The Quantum is the old flat head engine and it is made in both Murry and Poplar Bluff. The new motors are more fuel efficient and more torque than the old Quantum design.
And it is correct not 100% of the motors made here and in Murry are from American parts but the majority of the parts are made here.
I've seen the plastic carburetor machine in Murry and the body is/was from China but the carb is assembled here. The die cast carburetors are made in Murry...
I don't know where the twin cylinder plant gets its plastic from but from your research it comes from China.
I have a supplier badge and can walk into either plant when needed so I'm somewhat in the know about vertical shaft engines produced here and in Murry. I don't have a clue about the other plants...
John
Just because some equipment from Rolla was moved to Popular Bluff doesn’t mean all of the production was. You didn’t read my post carefully enough… I said half of the production was moved to the new plant in China.
Don't believe me ?? Here's the story...
Briggs closing plants in Jefferson, Waterown
And in 2012 Briggs and Stratton closed the Auburn, AL engine plant and move half of that production to China... the other half was sourced from third-party manufacturers in Southeast Asia!! That's right, Briggs is slapping their name on engines being produce by Southeast Asia (non-Briggs) manufacturers!!
Don't believe me ?? Here's the story...
More Cutting for Briggs & Stratton | Shop Operations content from American Machinist
As well, it's been common knowledge for some years now that B&S has been casting many of the engine blocks in Mexico.
Briggs and Stratton is a Global Company now... it hasn't been an American Company since the late 90's.
I'll tell you something else; this ain't the end of it, you'll be seeing more, and more B&S production being move outside the U.S. as our government regulations become more, and more strict.
Don't believe me ?? Here's the story...
Briggs closing plants in Jefferson, Waterown
And in 2012 Briggs and Stratton closed the Auburn, AL engine plant and move half of that production to China... the other half was sourced from third-party manufacturers in Southeast Asia!! That's right, Briggs is slapping their name on engines being produce by Southeast Asia (non-Briggs) manufacturers!!
Don't believe me ?? Here's the story...
More Cutting for Briggs & Stratton | Shop Operations content from American Machinist
As well, it's been common knowledge for some years now that B&S has been casting many of the engine blocks in Mexico.
Briggs and Stratton is a Global Company now... it hasn't been an American Company since the late 90's.
I'll tell you something else; this ain't the end of it, you'll be seeing more, and more B&S production being move outside the U.S. as our government regulations become more, and more strict.
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jthornton
ArboristSite Guru
It is not possible to compete in a global market place from one place and a large share of B&S market is over seas. That is one of the reasons Briggs is still making engines...
This is the sad truth and we keep electing people to make it worse...
I'm done talking about it because you are talking about all of Briggs products not the engines I'm talking about...
John
