ashtree

How far along its engaged travel does the gear lever move before it goes solid. When trying to engage is there any noise from the box. If you try to engage gear without pressing the clutch do you get a ratcheting sound. Is the problem the same in reverse.

Cancer I think, so most likely the ciggies. There was a lot of wine made in that house, he made it from anything he could get hold of.....quantity not quality was his watchword. I have known him make twenty gallons at a time and always started drinking it while it was still fermenting, he would dip a half pint mug in and called it a nice drop of "nasty", which it certainly was. I could never stomach it, you'd only ever try it the once. Still they lived a happy life so now't wrong with that.

These engines have wet cylinder liners with a neoprene O ring to seal it to the block at the bottom. If the engine has been hanging around for a long time it's quite possible that corrosion can occour in the seal/land area allowing water into the sump. I'm not saying this will have happened and these engines are pretty bomb proof generaly but just be alert to it, the condition of the oil should be a good indicator. Good luck with it.

I had a neighbour with a stand of five silver birches who made wine from the sap every year. He drilled a hole, poked in some clear plastic tube with the other end in a demijohn and waited. It was amazing how fast the sap ran out almost like a tap, but what fascinated me was the way that when a cloud obscured the sun the flow dried up within minutes only to resume when the sun came out again. He made a lot of birch sap wine and he drank a lot of birch sap wine, so did his wife. They both died young within six months of each other. Not saying it was the birch sap............could have been the fags.

Buy a cheap hobby compressor with a 20l tank from Machine Mart or similar for under £100. Charge it fully up at home then chuck it in the van to take to the job. Cleaning crud from saws only takes short bursts, so with care a tank full should last you all day. I often use this method going round a boat park blowing up tyres and it works well enough though I have to go for a refill more often than you will.

I'm pretty sure this is a Zama carb and if you Google it there is a very informative set of service notes from Zama. The litle black disc is a one way check valve (there are others) and I think should go one side or the other of the little spring under the alloy cover you pushed back in. A bit of sucking and blowing with a suitable bit of rubber pipe should help ypu to work out which way round it should be. Zama stress that under no circumstances should you blow this type of carburettor out with an airline for fear of dislodging the various check valves. I went gung ho with the airline the other day and now I've got a little black disc too..........don't know where the hell it came from. The good news is that a new carb can be had for just a few quid, so don't struggle too long.

David, Hope you have got the problem solved now, the thread seems to have gone cold. If you are still in trouble I think the clue lies in your first post (No 1 inlet valve hit piston hard enough to bend push rod) but no marks on other pistons, clearly the valve was open at the wrong time for some reason. As all else has failed look for a broken camshaft (I've come across a few in my time on the shop floor). It would be an oblique palm split and the camshaft would still turn as it is rigidly supported but the timing would be different before and after the break. That problem with the oil is gross and I can't see that much getting down the guides, or past the rings for that matter, but if the inlet valve is staying closed at the wrong time creating a vacuum as the piston descends I suppose it could draw oil up past the piston. A bit of a shot in the dark all this but worth a look maybe. Best of luck with it. Graham Illsley.

Hi Ragnar, As a rule of thumb I would use 20 degrees as a safe side angle to run an oil sump engine for extended periods though I have no knowledge of the Kubota engine in particular. I would top the oil up just a bit over the full mark to be on the safe side, it won't hurt it. Hope this helps.

Do what agi says then when you are sure you are getting a strong air free jet of fuel from the injection pump bleed screws you can try this. Fully undo the injector pipes and pull them back from the injector unions. Crank the engine (you may have to do this for 20 seconds or so) and watch what comes out. There will be quite a bit of froth but you should finish up with a little billet of solid fuel as each pipe injects. While you are doing this look to see if compression gasses are coming out of any injector stub and if so this is your problem. It's not a common thing but injector needles do occasionaly stick and hold off the seat allowing compression to blow back down the injector pipe into the pump and stop the job. CAV rotary pumps (if that's what you've got) don't have delivery valves (one way valves) on the outlet to the pipes so any gas from the engine goes straight into the pump and forces the fuel back. Let us know how you get on.

We had a similar situation with a wind split ash on our land where the much weakened stem was threatening to fall on the footpath at the side of the house. The tree was too dangerous to climb and needed a MEWP to tackle it but being Christmas it was obviously going to be a little while before we could source the right tackle. I put a notice on the footpath at each end of our property reading :- DANGER You are advised not to use this footpath for the time being due to unsafe tree. Some people went another way and some didn't, but I reckoned I would have a good defence if anything nasty happened and they had ignored the warning.

The NGK plug code gives all necessary information on the plug type and construction and can be found online if you want to plough through it. Your two plugs are the same with the only difference being the number which denotes the heat range. The lower the number the hotter the plug runs, so the 6 would be slightly hotter than the 7. In practice this means that a 6 will heat up quickly and run hot to prevent the build up of deposits in, for instance, a low power low compression engine whereas the 7 would run cooler and protect itself from overheating in a high performance engine. I'm not sure how much of a difference there is between the plugs you mention and probably either would do. The plug reach should be the same but just do a physical check before you fit. Cheers.

Cutting into a silage clamp on a cold winters day in the years when they used to put molasses in it. Smelled like Christmas pud.

Hello Jamesd, I had a similar problem with a John Deere and as it was brand new took it back to the dealer who upped the revs by a couple of hundred, it absolutely transformed the performance. When I asked him why the factory didn't set it at that in the first place he said it was to meet EU noise legislation. Might be worth looking at that.

Hi Russ, As you will have seen from my earlier post on this thread I have found the 18/100G to be a good bit of kit. At 375Kg all up it will tow behind most any car and is light enough to be manhandled into most situations. The trailer has no brakes however so keep chocks handy when unhitching on a slope and dont let it get away from you. It will certainly fit into your garage but you will have to take the high discharge tube off every time which is a bit fiddly (unless you've got a very tall garage). The high discharge is an advantge though as it gives you plenty of options when blowing into the back of a vehicle as you can't always position to blow direct in from the rear and you can point it in from the side.

To my recall these engines had a decompressor lever on each rocker cover that holds the exhaust valve off its seat. So, assuming all is in reasonable order.....decent compression, injectors that still spray and not squirt, functioning injection pump, then the drill is to turn the decompressors on, get it turning over as fast as you can with the starting handle then with your free hand flick the deco levers off and with a bit of luck, a mighty rumble and a cloud of smoke you will have a running engine........if it doesent start go and have a cup of tea and try again. Good luck. Incidentaly, if as I suspect, you are too young to have had to use starting handles then take my advice and don't wrap fingers and thumb round the handle but make sure your thumb is in line with your fingers on the same side of the handle. This is not a comfortable way to hold it but if the engine kicks back at least you won't dislocate your thumb.

Hi Paul, Medics always give you the worst case scenario, so hopefully you won't get much in the way of side effects. With regard to hearing aids I wear two NHS ones and they are pretty good, fitting behind my ears with just a thin clear plastic tube to transmit the sound into the ear canal, very unobtrusive to the extent that people often say they didn't know I wear them, not that I care a sod these days, vanity disappears when you get your bus pass. Yes you can wear them with ear defenders, I do a bit of ground work for my son and use a chain saw ok, I also chip up for him though usualy take them out when doing that as it seems pointless to leave them in when you're doing your best to keep the noise out. Good luck with what's happening to you, but if it comes to wearing hearing aids don't worry you'll do fine with them. Best wishes. Graham.

It certainly sounds that this engine is burning its own oil so you need to find how it is getting into the cylinders. Does the head have recessed combution chambers or did you have to remove the valves to have the head skimmed? If the valves were removed did you refit with new stem seals or could you have missed refitting one or more altogether, ( not doubting your ability here but it can easily happen ). If you put old (hardened) seals back they could very well let oil down the valve stems especially as you would have disturbed the carbon seal which will have built up over the years at the top of the guides. The only other thing I can think of that might be a factor is the amount of oil feed to the rocker shaft, if you had the shaft and pedestals off there might be some sort of restricter that got missed on rebuild allowing excess oil flow to the rockers, this would swamp the valve stems and allow oil down the guides. You could try taking the rocker cover off anf startng the engine, this would be messy but you would soon see if oil is running everywhere instead of just a nice oozing round the rockers.

A good machine in my opinion. I have one three years old which I bought new when my son left the army and started his business, it'll chip as fast as you can load it but as Woody Paul says, when it grabs some four inch stuff it grunts a bit as there is no stress relief. If I can I break contact and let the revs recover though it often gets the better of me and doesn't seem to come to any harm. If you buy one keep sharp blades in it and it will serve you well, they are not difficult to change. Look down the discharge flange in the casing and make sure that all the aluminium fan blades are intact as you pull the engine over on the starter cord. If you can drop the three drive belts off and rotate the fly wheel by hand checking for any roughness or noise in the shaft bearings, then give it a brisk heave on the pully and see how many rotations before it stops, I would expect about twelve and you should be able to stop the rotor in any position without it moving again if it is in balance. The factory say the shaft bearings should be changed every 250 hours and I have done mine using local supplier bearings to TW specification, they are not expensive but a bit of a pain to do. Hope this is of some use and good luck with it.

Done, very important we act.

The Will Hay films

A quick check you can make is to run your fingers from the outside to the inside of each tyre and back again. If the tread feels 'sharp' going in then the wheels are toeing out, and if it is sharp coming out then they are toeing in. The most likely reason for a tyre to wear excessively on one side or the other is missalignment causing the tyre to crab down the road, this distorts the tread profile making it bulge slightly due to side pressure so that wears more quickly than the rest of the tread, hence the bald area on one side. There are other factors that can cause your problem but you need to make sure the tracking is right first. A tyre company with decent tracking gear would be your best bet. Hope this helps.

Thanks for that.

An excellent on the job fix and obviously saved much money and down time. Can I ask how you got the old bearings out, does the plate come off to do that? Did you have to change the drive end bearing as well or was it ok? I will shortly need to change the bearings on my TW 18/100, it's only a small machine but the shop wants about £450 + vat (not VAT registered) and it's a 120 mile round tow to take it in anyway. I'm quite handy mechanically but without experience on these things. Any helpful comments would be much appreciated. Thanks.

flighty, I am going to suggest a solution to your scarrifying problem that some of the guys may find laughable cos this isn't by any way a proffesional machine, but I am speaking from my own experience. Six years ago I bought a Mantis Tiller which is a tiny little thing but punches well above its weight and still only costs about £350 - £400. Mine has an Echo two stroke engine although I think the current ones have a four stroke Honda, either way I have never had a moments trouble from mine and it does all I want to do on my quarter acre. The basic machine mounts two double tine discs for cultivating and these can be easily removed and replaced with the optional spring tine scarrifyers. Now, I've never used a proffesional scarrifyer but I can vouch for the fact that the Mantis really gets the thatch and moss out and has a surprisingly good work rate. Given that you have a lot of obstructions in a fiddly garden to deal with this might be just the bit of kit, and not too expensive. The manufacturers say you can return it for a refund for up to a year if you don't get on with it.....though I don't suppose that applies if you bought it as a business user. Plenty of information on the web if you want to look into it.