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I have a Briggs and Stratton rider with a 13.5 344 cc mower. While mowing it made a strange noise and stopped working. Noticed it was smoking from under my air filter. My neighbor looked at it, pulled spark plug and turned the top of mower and got no compression. My question is, is this fixable? Was thinking of getting a rebuild kit. Its 10 yes old. Thank you for any advice.
@linlee what exact model is your mower and your engine? That way we can do more research into this issue. There will be no compression with the plug removed :-) You would need a compression tester to check that out. This could be something as simple as a misadjusted or otherwise malfunctioning valve etc. So we need a bit more information. Update (06/11/2018) Let’s start off with a few things for you to keep right now. Here is the parts manual for your 21B807-1169-B1 engine 21B8071169B1.pdf and here is the operators manual 275935. First thing you want to do is to connect the spark plug to the spark plug socket. Then get it to a point where the bottom part of the plug touches the metal. When you try and start the engine, do you get spark on the plug? If so we know that your ignition works. Tell us more about the noise you heard. Possible that you ran over something? Smoke coming from the air intake could be caused by premature timing. some general information that we may need later on. I add it here so we do not have to go back to find the information Armature Air Gap-0.010-0.014in Spark Plug Gap-0.030in Valve clearance Intake 0.003-0.005in Exhaust 0.005-0.007in Model Series 210000 Bore-3.44in Stroke 2.27in 21 cu.in. (344cc) displacement Update (06/11/2018) Okay, this should work better for you. It’s the system check part of the manual for your engine. When they are talking about spark plug tester, that is a tool that you use instead of grounding the plug to see if it works :-) OHV-BRIGGS-&-STRATTON.pdf
No compression sounds like a serious engine problem. In my opinion, the best option would be to see how much a rebuilt engine would cost. That would be a whole lot easier than trying to rebuild the engine, that is, unless you have done that sort of thing before, or if you have a friend who knows how to rebuild an engine. Riding lawn mowers are very expensive. My guess is that the cheapest way to solve this is to get a rebuilt engine.
