K301 teardown

[tobo127]

When tearing my engine down for a rebuild I ran across a few interesting items. This is not surprising seeing how the PO treated the rest of the tractor. If you remember from another one of my posts, the 127 tunnel was hacked open with a sawzall (soon to be rewelded closed), the driveshaft flex joint had both couplers bolted straight together with the flex joint (not 90° apart), along with other assorted not too bright mechanical decisions. Tearing into the engine revealed that he must have been in there also! First, the setscrews for the PTO were in wrong. The short one was installed first, then the long pointed one was used to lock the first one. Had a bear of a time taking out the small ones because the point on the long one had wedged open and cracked the hex side of the short allens, making them jamb in the tapped hole. After hours of putzing around they finally came out (some in pieces). Then I moved to the valve cover. The baffle plate was found to be installed upside down with the oil drain hole on top. These were both somewhat believable mistakes I suppose, both of them being a 50/50 proposition of getting it right if you had no bleeping idea of the concept. The kicker was the last thing I found. On the PTO end of the crankshaft, I popped out the oil seal and found another one, in backwards, behind the first one! Thinking how this could be..............with the mechanical ability I've seen to this point with the PO, I surmise that he probably put the original seal in backwards and eventually ended up with an oil leak. He probably (all conjecture at this point) couldn't get the old one out or knocked it in trying to get it out, but in either case installed the second oil seal in correctly, leaving the other one in there to have a happy ride on the crankshaft next to the main bearing. We'll probably never know what he was thinking (or his lack thereof)!

Enough of the Darwin award, at this point, with everything out of the engine, I have one question. How much shaft to governor gear play should there be (how much does the gear rock on the shaft, if any)? If I'd seen enough of these Kohlers apart I'd have a good idea myself (experience is a wonderful thing), but this being my first........ I'm wondering how a new gear fits and if my gear bore is worn enough to be of concern and should be replaced or are they normally somewhat sloppy when new? I understand the governor spring and linkage keeps the gear loaded onto the shaft up against the block but my gear seems pretty loose on the shaft. I saw no spec in the manual referencing this gear. I don't want this to get chewed up later because of clearance issues to the camshaft gear. Someone else's experience and knowledge will help me out here.