Most people I know, myself included, consider a good healthy life for an automobile gasoline engine to be 200-300k with good maintenence before needing major mechanical repair/overhaul. Obviously there is the potential for greater longevity with very particular maintenance and careful operation, but I'm looking at purely averages with normal maintenence.
Is there a similar expectation most people would agree on when it comes to small engines, the single & twin cylinder gas engines you find on OPE and mobile machinery applications? With few exceptions, these are almost always carbureted.
We have a fleet of gas welders where I work, most are driven by a Kohler Command CH18 or CH20 twin cylinder engine. 600cc or so, IIRC. Some older ones have/had Onan flathead twins. For whatever reason, our operators usually give up on them and begin pushing for replacements around 5k hours. The engines usually still run fine at this age, but this is often where they begin smoking a little, might start burning oil, perhaps be a little noisier, but otherwise run fine. I can't think of any examples where one has outright died, but we've had one bend a pushrod (no idea why), a couple with carburetor issues, a broken choke, little stuff like this happens but no major failures that I know of.
Typical maintenance is oil, oil filter, air filter, fuel filter all get replaced every 100-150 hours. Oil used is mostly 10w-30 or 10w-40 o'Reilly brand PCMO. Spark plugs only when they're so worn they exhibit misfire symptoms. Some machines will get in the hands of an operator that does zero maintenance, so they may go an interval on occasion where its next service is only when the oil pressure sender shuts the engine down when it reads low oil pressure. That's happened a few times but is not typical. Oem suggests 50 hrs interval for oil, 100 for filter. Having done many of the oil changes myself, I feel 50 hours is a bit premature, the oil has very little color to it (hardly looks used) when drained at that interval, but I know that color is not the most useful indicator.
Still, most every engine makes it to around 5k and then they're largely given up on. I think equates to about 5-6 years. Would you guys consider this premature, or is one really getting their money's worth replacing the equipment/engine after 5k hours. What would you consider a 'good' lifespan for these types of engine, and when would you expect to see major mechanical issues with regular maintenance.
In this application (welder/generator), it is very low duty cycle. I would surmise that a given machine spends 4-6 hours idling (idle speed is 2400 rpm) in a workday, for every 2 hours spent welding which is probably half throttle at 3600rpm.
Is there a similar expectation most people would agree on when it comes to small engines, the single & twin cylinder gas engines you find on OPE and mobile machinery applications? With few exceptions, these are almost always carbureted.
We have a fleet of gas welders where I work, most are driven by a Kohler Command CH18 or CH20 twin cylinder engine. 600cc or so, IIRC. Some older ones have/had Onan flathead twins. For whatever reason, our operators usually give up on them and begin pushing for replacements around 5k hours. The engines usually still run fine at this age, but this is often where they begin smoking a little, might start burning oil, perhaps be a little noisier, but otherwise run fine. I can't think of any examples where one has outright died, but we've had one bend a pushrod (no idea why), a couple with carburetor issues, a broken choke, little stuff like this happens but no major failures that I know of.
Typical maintenance is oil, oil filter, air filter, fuel filter all get replaced every 100-150 hours. Oil used is mostly 10w-30 or 10w-40 o'Reilly brand PCMO. Spark plugs only when they're so worn they exhibit misfire symptoms. Some machines will get in the hands of an operator that does zero maintenance, so they may go an interval on occasion where its next service is only when the oil pressure sender shuts the engine down when it reads low oil pressure. That's happened a few times but is not typical. Oem suggests 50 hrs interval for oil, 100 for filter. Having done many of the oil changes myself, I feel 50 hours is a bit premature, the oil has very little color to it (hardly looks used) when drained at that interval, but I know that color is not the most useful indicator.
Still, most every engine makes it to around 5k and then they're largely given up on. I think equates to about 5-6 years. Would you guys consider this premature, or is one really getting their money's worth replacing the equipment/engine after 5k hours. What would you consider a 'good' lifespan for these types of engine, and when would you expect to see major mechanical issues with regular maintenance.
In this application (welder/generator), it is very low duty cycle. I would surmise that a given machine spends 4-6 hours idling (idle speed is 2400 rpm) in a workday, for every 2 hours spent welding which is probably half throttle at 3600rpm.
