Maybe this can help others.
My wife mowed our lawn early last week, we have a 21-inch Troy-Bilt Self-propelled Mulcher with above mentioned engine. Afterwards she decided to clean the under deck area of all the stuck on grass. Good wife! Unfortunately, she tilted the mower forward to access the underside placing the cylinder in a downward facing position.
On next use the mower was hard to start and smoked like crazy due to oil being trapped in the cylinder during her cleaning process. On the use following that the engine surged noticealby at idle speeds, but ran properly when cutting hard.
Reading the B&S Owner's Manual reveals that what she did could also cause oil to saturate the air filter element. I installed a new pleated paper filter today and found the two month old element heavily saturated. Problem solved! Engine runs great again.
My wife mowed our lawn early last week, we have a 21-inch Troy-Bilt Self-propelled Mulcher with above mentioned engine. Afterwards she decided to clean the under deck area of all the stuck on grass. Good wife! Unfortunately, she tilted the mower forward to access the underside placing the cylinder in a downward facing position.
On next use the mower was hard to start and smoked like crazy due to oil being trapped in the cylinder during her cleaning process. On the use following that the engine surged noticealby at idle speeds, but ran properly when cutting hard.
Reading the B&S Owner's Manual reveals that what she did could also cause oil to saturate the air filter element. I installed a new pleated paper filter today and found the two month old element heavily saturated. Problem solved! Engine runs great again.
Last edited:
