Well, got a new HG and sheet of 1/4" glass yesterday, got the head flattened, block mating surface all nice and clean and got it all back together. My carb 'rebuild' seems to have worked so far (so far no sign of fuel leaking out of it when it's not running like it did before). The starting point for the carb in the cub cadet manual seemed to be a pretty good starting point and with a little tweaking of the idle adjustment, got it idling nicely. Does seem to be running a bit better now. Since I got it good and hot, I'm going to let it sit at least until tonight, maybe tomorrow morning and re-torque the bolts.
Side note: I did a quick search to see if there were any different, updated torque specs, and in a thread I found, J-Mech mentioned to re-torque after a heat cycle (something I already knew to do) and that it's in the manual - I have every confidence that it's in the manual he has, but it's not in the Cub Cadet manual that I have, unless it's in some radically different location from the torque specs on page 1-20 and 1-21 (which BTW, in case anyone is looking for the specs in the future, the Cub cadet manual specifies 420 in/lb for the K301, which comes out to 35 ft/lb).
Once thing I noticed in the manual after the fact that I've NEVER heard of before, is the CC manual recommends to soak new HGs in water before assembly. Any thoughts on that? Is it just a 'holdover' from the era that the manual was written and the materials of the time?
Quote:
Originally Posted by zippy1
Cougar281,
Take what Jon says to the bank. My advice is to listen to what he's telling you, and you'll be money ahead, and won't have the headache.
We've been around these tractors long enough to know what works best, and what don't. With the collective knowledge of this group, if the trandenser was the "hot ticket", we'd all be using it.  |
I mean no offense, and I certainly do listen to what the has to say (if he tells me 'do X Y and Z' when you install the crank, piston and rod, I WILL take that to the bank - but if he tells me 'carbs are better than FI', well, not so much
), but at the same time, I know that people can be 'set in their ways' and sometimes, just because one way 'works', that doesn't mean there there isn't another way to do the same thing that might even be better - without solid proof that the 'other way' isn't as good or is worse, that's where opinion comes into play (failure alone isn't really an indicator of one way being better or worse ANYTHING can and will fail at some point). Some things are difficult to impossible to improve upon and some things can be improved upon.
Carburetors are a PERFECT example. Yes, they 'work'. But they suck. They are imprecise, barely controlled fuel leaks. I'd rather have a Fuel injected computer controlled engine any day of the week. FI is SO much more flexible. On both my car and truck, I can have multiple tunes in the ECM and with a flip of a switch, I can go from reasonable fuel economy and tame street manners to HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTT!! The truck more than the car - The truck has five tunes from stock (By the time all is said and done, maybe 275-300 at the wheels) to at least 450hp/800Tq at the wheels. You're not going to get near that much change out of a gas engine with just tuning. With a carb, you can only have one or the other. If you set a carb up for some kind of economy, you can pretty much forget about any serious power, and if you set it up for serious power, you can pretty much forget about any kind of economy.
Anyway, back on topic