The Mystery Of The Lost Lawnmower Engine

 My eldest son found this Lawnmower Engine in the forest where he, and a few of his friends would hang out.  What a surprise to find out what type of engine it was.

Yep, of course it's a Tecumseh Engine! It likely will never run again, but it'll be fun to crack into it, and see what happened, or if it was just an act of blatant littering? 
What a riot! I had so much fun making this video, but things went sideways in a real hurry.  When the first bolt snapped, I wasn't at all upset by it, but when my Philips tip snapped off, I was just a little surprised.. It was new, and Milwaukee.  Maybe because it was in a DeWalt impact? Kind of like when you have a Toyota, and you accidentally park Next to a Dodge, and suddenly end up with electrical problems... Get that Premature Electrical Failure, typical of Dodge..

The funny thing about this, is as soon as he brought it home, I said.. "I have to make an imitation "Restoration" video with this thing.  
So I decided to take it, my son included, into the forest, and low and behold, there's a mound of freshly cut grass in the middle of the forest. WHAT a perfect spot to make the plant, and pretend that we just randomly found a Lawnmower engine near a large mound of freshly mowed grass. The funniest thing is that the mound of grass was entirely random! We had nothing to do with that, it was just pure coincidence. Like the Matrix meant it to happen that way. Almost as if you don't really have any actual real decisions in life, and it's all preordained. 

As for the tear down, which originally was not going to BE a Tear Down. I was hoping to do an actual, maybe, Restoration Video, see if I could get this engine running, or if there were any viable parts..

Unfortunately, there really weren't many. I mean, the valves weren't terrible, but they may be very badly pitted, however they seemed more caked in carbon, and oil... 

As you can see in this photo, there is a lot of stuck on crud all over the springs. This seems to have, for the most part, protected the metal from the elements.  
It was strange how some elements of the engine were just beyond redemption, while others were almost preserved.
The coil, as you'll see in another photo, was a total loss, at least I'm thinking it will be. It is pretty badly rusted, and I don't think it survived being in the elements for, at least I'm thinking a decade or more.

As you can see with the valves, they don't look terrible, but they are definitely showing visible signs of rust, and likely have pitting. But the only way to really know, will be to clean them up.

Afterwards, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with them. I don't know about reusing them in any Tecumseh engine, as I have several other ones that are in significantly better condition than these ones, but again.. They're not cleaned up, and they might come out really good.
Only thing I can do is clean them up..

The spark plug, well, that's another story altogether. I honestly think it'll still work, I'm also really, 100%, going to try it out in an upcoming video. 
I torched it off to see if there is any hope in getting it going.. I really do believe it'll create fire. 
Just hoping I don't get called out by it hahaha!

Certainly wouldn't be the first time that's happened to me.  Gone to start a mower, and .... yeah, didn't happen. Why? Oh, well, I mean, my videos are all 

"Brought To You By
A Forgotten Spark
Plug Wire"

So it's not all that uncommon for me to completely forget to reattach the spark plug wire.

Taking off the flywheel was another ordeal, and one that I'm glad I've started using my air-hammer to get off. It makes life a lot easier. No smashing the crankshaft with a hammer, just get the air chisel out, and give it a quick "Brrrt"
Off it comes! It's quite the treat to do. If you don't have an air-hammer, they're inexpensive, unless you don't have a compressor. 
If you have a battery drill, like a DeWalt, or Milwaukee, Metabo, Makita, etc, you can pick up a cheap second hand Rotary Hammer Drill, but make sure it has the "Chipping" action, get a chipping pin, and use that, it'll do the same thing.

This part here, the flywheel, even the starter cup, is probably one of the actual useful parts that I got from this.  
I'm pretty impressed with how well preserved the cup is, considering..
The flywheel, being aluminum, I'm not surprised took the weathering a fair bit better.
And as for the magnets, well.. They're still magnets.







The one thing that I thought was absolutely bizarre, was the head. Part of the head had rotted away, to the point that it likely would have caused a major head gasket leak.
While removing the head bolds, only one broke believe it or not, while I was removing them, the head started to come away before I had removed the last bolt.
That was concerning... very concerning, because now the head is completely useless as well.

What the heck happened to this engine?? I wonder what trauma it caused when it died to get tossed into a forest?

The PCV Valve was completely shot, the sponge filter had entirely deteriorated into a clump.
It was all over for that part... and that's when I saw that the engine still had, what looked like, a black, grey, sludge... Turns out it was mostly water, but did have a little bit of oil still in it.

And since there were no holes in the block, and the piston was at the bottom of the bore, with both the valves closed, and that was probably all that was left of the oil that was in that machine.

When I saw the journals on that Connecting Rod, and how scored they were, I knew what happened.

It was run low on oil, causing the bearings to overheat, and the connecting rod just blew apart
Total disaster.
I was hoping to get some kind of movement out of the engine, but it is entirely locked up. Even after removing the connecting rod pieces, the engine does not budge.
I tried with a pair of grips on the crank, and attempted to turn it, but nothing... It is completely stuck.

Rod McNuggets, which fell out of the engine

You can see the governor gear, which still looks like it'll function.

The bottom of the crankshaft can be seen here, and it's very rusted

A collection of the parts removed from the engine

It really is amazing how often you see engines run low on oil. Whether they're $20k+ cars, or lawn mowers.. They all need lubrication.
Not too much oil, but never too little. Too little, and this is what happens. They seize up, and are destroyed.
They are incredible marvels of engineering, and have driven our entire world forward to what it is today.
It's amazing how easily so many governments are willing to just throw that all away for apparently "Green" initiatives (meaning forcing more consumerism, and throwing away more things)..

I am trying to come up with an idea of what to do with this engine now that I have it, as I don't want to scrap it. I kind of want to keep it, maybe use the the parts to make some 

"S-Crap P-Arts" heh...

If anything happens with it, I'll definitely be updating in a new post.

Thanks for reading!

Chat soon!