WinCo POWER-MITE Generator (part 5) Recoil Start

The 4HP engine from a few days ago should have a recoil starter that fits the winco.

Need to characterize this engine to see if should be canalized or revived. 

Cylinder bore inspection

To gain experiance with the dial bore gauge I decided to characterize the engines I have the heads off.

standard min 2.4990"   max 2.500"
Crankshaft is along the '2' axis

 dial reading     adjusted     

A1  -0.0005      2.5025
A2   0.0000      2.5030

B1  -0.0010      2.5020
B2   0.0000      2.5030                 

C1 -0.0015      2.5015            

C2 -0.0003      2.5027

2.4" anvil with .12" washer

Briggs says:

If the bore is more than .003” (.08 mm) oversize, or
.002” (.04 mm) out of round on cast iron cylinders, or
.003” (.06 mm) out of round on aluminum cylinders, it
must be resized, or see NOTE below.

The bore has reached but not exceeded the wear limit in the  '2' direction.

This is an aluminum cylinder so the larger out of round applies.   The worst level is level C at ( 2.5027" -2.5015 ")  or 0.0012".   This is not quite half of the allowed  003" allowed.

In the 2 direction we have a taper from bottom to top.   According to Oklahoma State "Taper in the top half is cause by dirt ingestion through the air filter. Taper in the bottom half is caused by dirty oil.

This is all based on trusting the digital micrometer I am using.  Would be nice to have some way to check it.

WinCo POWER-MITE Generator (part 6) New Cart and a Service Tag

 For some months now the WinCo Generator has been sitting on this overloaded cart.  The intention had been to attach the chain to the ceiling so it would prevent the WinCo from hitting the floor should the cart fail.  That was lame and never happened.

This cart was originally an AV center at the local high school.  It was buried in clutter over at the other shop so I liberated it to hold the WinCo.

The AV cart is much more suited to the WinCo. Tomorrow I will get a picture of the generator on its new cart.

Attached to the generator was this service tag.  It was an even shade of brown but a light brushing revealed the name of service shop still in business in Amarillo Tx.

WinCo POWER-MITE Generator (part 5) Intake valve trouble

Today I took another shot at lapping the intake valve.  Last time I tried it was below freezing and nothing seemed to work including my hands and the suction cup so I gave it up as a bad deal.  These are pictures borrowed from a previous post.

Try as I might I could not get a grinding noise.  So I checked the valve clearance and there was none. My guess is this is a botched repair job with the heli-coil sticking up and what looks like a freshly ground valve seat and a valve that was never adjusted.

Part of me wants to replace the seat but then that would possibly mean a new seat and valve.  I think the right thing to do is to grind off the valve stem and see what we end up with after a light lap.\

Feb 19th

The trouble I see with that is the valve will be too far now in the seat and the contact patch will be on the upper edge of the valve instead of in the middle.  The question is do I need a new valve, valve seat or both.

I wanted to see how another valve would work so I grabbed the intake from Little Briggs #2 which what has a bad exhaust valve guide.  But as you can see the 10 ci engine uses a larger valve.  Duh!

Need price both and do some more thinking.



Ordered a new valve and seat off ebay for $10.50!  Going rate is abou5t $25 each at the parts houses.

WinCo POWER-MITE Generator (part 4) Recoil Start

The recoil starter on the WinCo generator was replaced with a rope cup.  I would like to put it back to a recoil.

WinCo POWER-MITE Generator (part 3) Carb

Late this afternoon I pulled the carb off the tank and ran it through the ultrasonic cleaner several time.  This evening I finished the job by heating water to 140F on the range and cleaning it a few more times. The pump cover was a bit difficult to remove but a razor blade did the job.  The fuel pump diaphragm may be serviceable but I will replace it and keep this one for a don't care engine.  The spring is flat.  Only a few bits of the carb were painted yellow as you can see in the following 2 pictures
The hot water took much of the paint off.  The good news is the carb to tank gasket is in nice shape and I can use it to check my electronic pattern.

WinCo POWER-MITE Generator (part 2)

This was written a while back.  Not sure why it was not published.  Maybe it is a duplicate.

A paper shop towel soaked in acetone revealed the motor's ID.

10	Cubic inches
0	Series 0
2	Horizontal
3	Ball Bearing
2	Recoil Start

Date code is 1966.   Seems this a 10ci engine and sadly the only one in the bunch.  That is motive enough to tear into it.   Especially since I am still waiting for the pump diaphragm for the 3rd Little Briggs.

So "off with its head" say I.  But first pictures to document how it goes back together.

The head bolts came off easy enough and things do not look too bad. Tomorrow I will use the snap guages to find out how much cylinder wear there really is.

One of the head bolts has a helicoil that stands proud of the cylinder head.  I may have to file that down.

I did not see any reason for the engine not to run here so I figured it was time to inspect the valves. But again more pictures so I can get it back together.

For obvious reasons I have not included all the images here.  I need to refer back to the pictures and follow the time codes to make sense of them.

The exhaust valve seat could use a touch up but it is should not bad enough to keep this engine from running.

WinCo POWER-MITE Generator (part 1)

This is a 10ci Briggs most likely an old Civil Defense genset. The engine numbers are hidden by a heavy coat of yellow paint.  

The interesting part here is not the engine but the generator it is connected to.  It is a 115V 15.6A, 1800 continuous watts,  60 cycle generator.  Just the sort of thing one needs to keep the lighs on when the power is out.  Even with the model number I can not find any info on this generator.

The most telling clues are what it says on the outlet area. 

There is information about the ELECTRONIC CONSERVER on the WinCo sit. Need link here.  Also it is possible that the automatic idle vs continuous full speed will be a clue.

The spark plug came out ugly so I suspect it is a worn out Kool-Bore engine.  With luck the 4th little Brigg can replace it.







So far I have attempted to get it to fire with no luck.