Cosi
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- Location
- Kingscliff
Hope you got a good tarpchrisk said:
What did you do to or for or with your Laverda today?
- Thread starter CLEMTOG
- Start date
Sir Sidney Ruffdiamond
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- Location
- Cotwolds
Dellortoman said:My Briggs and Stratton lawn mower has never had an oil change since I found it on the tip 20 years ago (someone had chucked it out because the throttle cable had broken). It has a thick black substance in it that resembles tar. When the level gets low I top it up with old oil that I've drained out of a bike. I reckon if I put fresh oil in it the old thing would die of shock. The bloody thing just keeps going. Best mower I've ever got for nothing
Changed mine for the first time in 18 years - had to replace the battery a couple of years back and i have smoked a number of belts - bits keep falling off but she keep going - B + S engine from the States - mower made in Italy badged as a Massey Ferguson naturally - on long term errrrrrrrrrr loan
Is this how you also maintenance your Laverda motorcycles?
I have a couple of B&S engines, one on a generator and one on a lawn mower on my summer cottage.
They have worked very well far over 30 years, grandpa bought them.
Some old wrecks also, I think some of them have B&S engines. I change the oil after every couple of years (not for the wrecks of course), even earlier if it doesn't look good. It's always fresh oil of suitable grade.
I have a couple of B&S engines, one on a generator and one on a lawn mower on my summer cottage.
They have worked very well far over 30 years, grandpa bought them.
Some old wrecks also, I think some of them have B&S engines. I change the oil after every couple of years (not for the wrecks of course), even earlier if it doesn't look good. It's always fresh oil of suitable grade.
piranha-bro2
Hero member
- Location
- Melbourne
My B&S doesn't even have a dipstick - a little plastic screw plug that says oil fill - so I just pour in the exclusive B&S oil until it sorta looks full. Seems to work - hasn't blown up since the big rebuild 5 years ago, but I have zero idea what colour the oil is! There's a drain bolt but I've never removed it 
I'm with you, Cam. I effing hate mowing - about to do just that after only 2 weeks - too much sun and rain in Melbourne!
I'm with you, Cam. I effing hate mowing - about to do just that after only 2 weeks - too much sun and rain in Melbourne!
Dellortoman
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- Location
- Tasmania, Australia
Why I hate mowing:
When I was a kid - up until the age of about 18, I lived with my parents. One of the chores I had to do to earn my keep was mow the grass. But there was 3 fucking acres of it and we didn't have a ride-on mower. All we had was an ancient little Scott Bonnar petrol mower with about a 14" cut. It was so old that it pre-dated the invention of the retracting pull starter. It just had a pulley on top with a notch in it that you had to wind a knotted rope around. The bloody thing was knackered from all the acreage of mowing it had to do so it took a lot of winding up the string and pulling to coax the poor thing into life.
It was like painting the Sydney Harbour bridge - a never-ending task. My brother Tim and I would each have to do a couple of hours mowing every weekend to stay ahead of the growth in summer. It would take 2 or 3 weeks to cover the whole area, by which time you had to go back to the bit you did a few weeks ago and start again. It was a real damper on teenage social life when you wanted to go the beach or out partying with your mates, but your parents say "after you've done a couple of hours mowing"
When I was a kid - up until the age of about 18, I lived with my parents. One of the chores I had to do to earn my keep was mow the grass. But there was 3 fucking acres of it and we didn't have a ride-on mower. All we had was an ancient little Scott Bonnar petrol mower with about a 14" cut. It was so old that it pre-dated the invention of the retracting pull starter. It just had a pulley on top with a notch in it that you had to wind a knotted rope around. The bloody thing was knackered from all the acreage of mowing it had to do so it took a lot of winding up the string and pulling to coax the poor thing into life.
It was like painting the Sydney Harbour bridge - a never-ending task. My brother Tim and I would each have to do a couple of hours mowing every weekend to stay ahead of the growth in summer. It would take 2 or 3 weeks to cover the whole area, by which time you had to go back to the bit you did a few weeks ago and start again. It was a real damper on teenage social life when you wanted to go the beach or out partying with your mates, but your parents say "after you've done a couple of hours mowing"
G
Grant
Guest
What did you do to or for or with your B&S mower today?
Sir Sidney Ruffdiamond
Hero member
- Location
- Cotwolds
Well if someone does not stop this Briggs and Stratton frenzy (by the way, I used to have one I now regret to have given away back then) maybe Santa won't bring us any Laverda bits this Christmas. Here I go. As we shared in a previous post https://www.laverdaforum.com/forum/index.php/topic,98532.msg415409.html#msg415409 a good friend and I are out to reboot some of his several Alpino 500s. He dismantled pretty much of them years ago and now we are faced with an assortment of boxes full of parts in a varying shape. Worst of all may be, unsurprisingly, camshafts (hope the attachement can be seen at first trial).
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alan james
Senior member
Got a B&S 20hp V twin engine in my Countax tractor mower, had it for 12years never changed the oil as I don't know where the drain plug is. Gave it a treat six years ago and changed the oil filter as that's easy.
Top it up now and again with any old used black sump oil I can find. Never lets me down engine wise but it does like the odd drive belt or two.
Wish my old Laverda clunkers could stand such abuse.
Top it up now and again with any old used black sump oil I can find. Never lets me down engine wise but it does like the odd drive belt or two.
Wish my old Laverda clunkers could stand such abuse.
We have several pairs of camshafts, all of them damaged, quite possibly this being a chief reason for putting the bikes out of order back in the day. We have mostly worn outer bearing journals, a common failure in these bikes. Also worn cam lobes and ramps. To make things even worse rust has made appearance during prolonged and inadequate storage. Repair work seems to have been done on some cam tips. Also the journals of one of the shaftshave been sleeved at some given point. Pretty much useless.
Attachments
Happily, a couple of weeks ago another box popped up with a healthy pair of cams, these seem to belong to the engine we are rebuilding first, which seems to have barely a few miles on it. However, even in this one the exhaust camshaft has been reground to undersize and its bearings replaced by custom made brass items. Note wrong placement of camshafts for the pictures.
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Wilson,
Check whichever heads you intend using for flatness, especially the exhaust side tends to collapse on the upper deck around the central cam bearing. This rears its ugly little head when you get to the stage of torquing down the head and the only the exhaust cam binds...
I've found the original alloy cam bearing sleeves to be the most reliable of all. Needle bearings are loud and seem to chew cam journals for breakfast, possibly through misalignment and/or incorrect clearance (the needle bushes are meant to pressed into a housing, not to be clamped down). Maintaining generous valve clearances is a must, as valve seat recession can be a problem, causing lobe and bucket destruction. Get your lube system up to scratch, use good quality 20W50 motor oil and cam woes are a thing of the past. Wifeys' 500 has been running strong for almost 30 years now. A bump in compression and larger F500/OR600 valves makes it easy for her to keep up with my 750.
piet
Check whichever heads you intend using for flatness, especially the exhaust side tends to collapse on the upper deck around the central cam bearing. This rears its ugly little head when you get to the stage of torquing down the head and the only the exhaust cam binds...
I've found the original alloy cam bearing sleeves to be the most reliable of all. Needle bearings are loud and seem to chew cam journals for breakfast, possibly through misalignment and/or incorrect clearance (the needle bushes are meant to pressed into a housing, not to be clamped down). Maintaining generous valve clearances is a must, as valve seat recession can be a problem, causing lobe and bucket destruction. Get your lube system up to scratch, use good quality 20W50 motor oil and cam woes are a thing of the past. Wifeys' 500 has been running strong for almost 30 years now. A bump in compression and larger F500/OR600 valves makes it easy for her to keep up with my 750.
piet
Thanks for the info sfcpiet! Any advice is of great help at this stage. We plan on fitting the bigger race oil pump plus a Zan? oil coolerbfrom Wolfgang Haerter. Other than that we'll keep this engine as standard and if everything goes wright may be the second one will be uprated a bit. Hope tho find loads of input around here!
chrisk
Hero member
- Location
- Brisbane, Australia
Went to the shocker guy today, had leaking shocker fixed and a pair of lighter springs fitted. Put them back on bike 
it isn?t imitating a Hardtail anymore.
On Marty?s recommendation, dropped some oil volume from the front forks it?s not imitating a ..... a....... a...... rock at the front.
Polished it up and she?s good to spin up a few klms with Brett and Levo after Christmas.
it isn?t imitating a Hardtail anymore.On Marty?s recommendation, dropped some oil volume from the front forks
it?s not imitating a ..... a....... a...... rock at the front.Polished it up and she?s good to spin up a few klms with Brett and Levo after Christmas.
Chris, cable tie on the fork and wiggle the shock bump stop down the shaft if you can, it should stop where the travel ends. It should be using all the travel on huge hits, find a bumpy bit of road and go hard on the brakes. The forks should have a bit left to deal with bumps when braking. Its a good thing to make them comfy plus it keeps the tyres in contact with the road, that helps as well. Damping is a whole other thing. Buckets Way will be a good test for it, it's a bit bumpy.