opinions requested - briggs intek vs kohler courage

[keakar]

Originally Posted by wed68

The Courage was built on a budget to compete against the briggs. The quality control was not as good as the Kohler Command line of engines which has an excellent reputation. Google Kohler Courage plenty of reading on the web

I found stuff saying they use plastic gears for the cams and oil pump and other parts in courage engines, if thats true then I can understand why they have a bad rep

[jldsc]

Originally Posted by keakar

I found stuff saying they use plastic gears for the cams and oil pump and other parts in courage engines, if thats true then I can understand why they have a bad rep

Briggs uses a plastic oil pump gear also....With my experiences with Briggs I say their junk...JMO though.


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[keakar]

Originally Posted by jldsc

Briggs uses a plastic oil pump gear also....With my experiences with Briggs I say their junk...JMO though.


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not cheerleading for either brand but ....

with the briggs (as I understand it) its splash lubed so the oil pump is just recirculating and filtering the crankcase oil where with kohlers its a pressurized oiling system and an oil pump failure will destroy the motor.

if my understanding is correct then the briggs oil pump could fail and it still wouldn't hurt the engine at all. at least that's how I "think" it works. plus I think the oil pump is under a whole lot less stress and wear then a plastic cam gear would be.

I wouldn't even have asked the question if this wasn't a "courage" version motor. personally I think the kohler is a better motor with the exception that its not the courage, in which case I was thinking the briggs is better then a courage version kohler and that's the reason I wanted to ask for other "hopefully" better educated opinions rather then me just going by what I hear on the internet to see if I was making the correct assumptions about it.

well, I made my decision and will have to live with it now lol.

I swapped out the motors yesterday evening and it wasnt hard at all (my first time pulling a riding mower engine ) getting the pulley bolts broke loose by myself was the hardest part but I was surprised I had to also swap out the front end bracets as well since the mufflers mount differently and almost none of the mounting holes would line up. I wasn't expecting to have to do that but since the LX426 has the briggs engine and the LX425 has the kohler engine and the mufflers and muffler guards fit differently based on the shape of the engine and mufflers so the kohler muffler and muffler guard that fit the front end mounting brackets wouldn't fit onto the briggs.

found all the drive belts were shot under there so I have to replace those and the idler pulleys for em because they have raspy noisey bearings so that's the next project

once again guys, thank you all for every persons input and even if it was just an opinion based on ownership experience

[keakar]

final update:

everything went fine with parts swapping, only thing is the kohler engine needs different front end guard and muffler brackets so those needed to be swapped out as well.

I learned if you replace an engine on a mower you cant just drop any engine in it like you would think so you should replace it with the same brand to avoid running into front end guards and muffler bracket mounting issues.

just sold the other mower today for the same money I bought the other mower for so I broke even and got a newer cutting deck and mower