Honda GCV160 oil leak

[Finklejag]

I bought my Craftsman pressure washer 5 years ago and I noticed last week it was leaking oil from under the valve cover gasket. It has the Honda GCV160 on it. I never worked on a small engine before so I went straight to Youtube for some help. After watching a few videos it looked like the leak wasn’t from the valve cover but the little O Ring on the cam wheel pin that sticks out the bottom of the head. So I ordered a new O Ring and valve cover. Most people said to just buy another $6 valve cover because you will probably bend the original one getting it off because they use liquid gasket at the factory.
The replacement went well and the O ring didn’t look deformed or torn, so I don’t know how oil was seeping past it. We will see if my repair works after the RTV cures and I put oil back into it. The one thing I was surprised about how people were saying that these Honda engines always leak oil. This is my first small Honda engine seeing my past lawnmowers always had B&S engines.

 

[Fordiesel69]

common. ive seen this on the 160 and 190 engines.... Your fix should take care of it.

The best way to apply RTU is to apply a super thin bead on both the valve cover and head, then use a fiarly stiff bristle disposable paint brush and "blot" the rtv into the surface.

 

[TmanP]

Thanks for the writeup. Our pressure washer has a GCV160 that leaked oil as soon as we got it from Amazon, probably five or six years ago. After we let them know, their response (great customer service, by the way) was to give two choices - they'd either mail us a new one and we'd send the old one back with free shipping, or we could keep it and be refunded the whole purchase amount (what we chose), so we accidentally got a free pressure washer that leaks some oil on the garage floor when sitting but works quite well otherwise. I might have to give your fix a try sometime!

 

[ARB1977]

The 160 on my Troy Bilt lawnmower is 13 years old. Knock on wood has been solid. Regular maintenance and knock the grass off the air filter half way through the mowing season. Sorry got off topic.