1862 won't start, i need some help
 

I'm working on a 1862, it has the 18 horse kohler command engine. the guy that owns it says he was using it to mow and on more than one occasion after it warms up good it just quits and wouldn't start for about 1/2 hour. So to me common sense would say that the coil gets hot and quits. So i bought a new coil and put it in. At first it seemed to be fixed but right before i was going to call the guy to pick it up i tried to start it and it wouldn't. The engine was completely cooled. So i took the carb off and cleaned every part of it thouroly with carb cleaner and compressed air. and put in brand new autolite plugs (that's what it had) blew out the gas hoses, no clogs. Put on a new fuel filter, took the fuel pump apart and couldn't see a thing wrong with it. And after i crank it for a bit if i start to take the gas line off the pump that goes to the carb there's pressure there, so that should be good. and i checked the compression but since it has a compression release i'm not sure what good that did me. It's 80psi and 82psi. The battery is fully charged as well and it spins over good. and i tried spraying some carb cleaner in the carb while cranking it over an it doesn't even fire. and it has good blue spark. I forget how many hours it has, i think it's around 500 and when it does run it runs pretty good, doesn't smoke, or make any noises but it takes awhile for it to idle down. any ideas? and thanks for any help.

I don't know if this will help but, what I do is dump a little fuel into the carb and try to start it. If it fires then you know it's a fuel related problem and you can start troubleshooting that. If it doesn't then you probably have and ignition problem. Hopefully you can eliminate enough things and find your problem.

That's what i tried to do with the carb cleaner. It didn't fire at all. And the spark is nice and blue. and when i try to choke it after awhile i can smell gas but the plugs are dry. and i tired to find a gas leak but didn't see any.

Timing. I would think the timing might be off. Just speculating. I can't think of anything else

I'll check that out. But another weird part of this is that it occasionally starts up and runs great.

Does it have a fuel shut off solenoid on the carb bowl?

yes it does, I literally just got done putting a brand new one on. And it still won't start. Sometimes the old one didn't work but the wire feeding it power always had power when the key was on.

Since we know the fuel shut off solenoid is good I would look at a few carb related items.

1. Inspect the vacum line from the valve cover to the carb for damage(mine was).

2. Inspect carb throttle/choke linkage for proper operation.

3. Remove carb and clean/rebuild.

Here is the link to the Kohler service manual.http://www.kohlerengines.com/onlinec.../tp_2339_d.pdf

kohler won't start
 

The only other thing after all the work U did, is maybe a sticking valve. good luck fixing that bad boy.:Help:
DaDuke of

This being a magneto engine, the timing cannot be changed or be off.