Pulled the head...

[olds45512]

Originally Posted by darkminion_17

I have a piece of 1/4 tempered glass from a old coffee table.
Tempered does not flex like 1/8"
Tim, where do you get pieces of sandpaper sheets longer than, but wide enough to sand the head ?

I used 3m 9"x 11" paper.

[darkminion_17]

Well today Tim I found a source, Home cheepo rental dept. They sell individual sheets for the floor sanders. Sticky back and are 12x16 so you get 2 out of one.
Various grits to boot.

[zippy1]

Originally Posted by J-Mech

If you say so. Like I said, I know how they install and how they work. Points wear our on a Kohler about 1 or 2 times in the life of the motor, which is about 40 years. I bet that trandenser fails before a set of points do. I've seen them cause more problems than they fixed. But, it's your money, and your tractor.

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.

[Cougar281]

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?

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

[olds45512]

Torque spec on those heads is 25-30ft/lbs.

[Cougar281]

Maybe each manual has different specs?

[olds45512]

From the k series manual available from this site.

[Baccarat]

Cougar281. The Kohler Service Manual spec's the K301 head torque at 25-30 ft/lbs as Olds45512 indicates. Considering that it is a Kohler engine I would lean toward their specifications. Just my 2 cents.

I am not so sure that your carburetor versus FI comparison is at all relevant. Your comparing a 40 or 50 year old engine and system to a modern day engine and system. A single cylinder garden/lawn tractor engine from the 1970s wasn't designed to be either great economy or great power. They were designed to be the best combination that could be achieved at that time, in that era. Again, just my 2 cents.

JMech doesn't say that a transdenser doesn't work. I think he is only implying that the cost of it is not really worth whatever the gain might be.

If you've already torqued them to 35 ft/lbs and let it cool down, I'm not really sure what you should re-torque them to. My gut says to stick with our 35.

[Baccarat]

Didn't mean to step on your toes Tim. I was trying to copy that same image but kept getting the full page copy of the Kohler Service manual with all of the torquing specs.

[Cougar281]

Originally Posted by olds45512

From the k series manual available from this site.

Very interesting. My manual is the 'Blue Ribbon Service' manual for models 72, 104, 105, 124 & 125, part GSS-1398 found here (I don't think it's where I got the manual, but it's the same one).

Originally Posted by Baccarat

I am not so sure that your carburetor versus FI comparison is at all relevant. Your comparing a 40 or 50 year old engine and system to a modern day engine and system. A single cylinder garden/lawn tractor engine from the 1970s wasn't designed to be either great economy or great power. They were designed to be the best combination that could be achieved at that time, in that era. Again, just my 2 cents.

My only point being that some people prefer carbs over FI for whatever reason - it's what they're used to, they've been working with them forever, etc, but that doesn't mean they're better. Same thing goes for the condenser vs transdenser. Is the Transdenser truly better? I don't know. But it does work. Of course, in the case of the CC, it's not like you can retrofit FI onto it (or pretty much any single cylinder engine - as far as I know, even brand new lawnmowers are still carbed). The example is more relevant with my friends '76 F100 - he HATES the carb in that and desperately wants to swap in a 5.4L.