What the Hell Honda?

[Ben]

So just went to change the oil for the first time on my Troy-Bilt pressure washer with a Honda GCV190 engine. There is no oil drain plug!  I thought there was something wrong with my manual, so I did a quick search.

Turns out the cartoon drawing in the manual is correct: you tip the freakin' engine and let the oil run out the fill tube. How mickey mouse is that? I would have never expected that from a Honda engine. My Honda generator with the older GX-160 has an actual drain plug, so this must be some kind of money saving thing.

EDIT: GCV190, not the 160, and the genset has the GX-160. I'm collecting too many small engines to keep track!

[230RN]

It probably costs $572.48 to bush and thread a hole in the bottom, and another $276.57 for a plug from an outside vendor. Eliminating that $849.05 per unit adds up to a bit of savings over 10,000 units.

Stockholders are happy then.

Designer who came up with this cost-saving idea got a $500.00 bonus.

Oh, I forgot the $0.05 for the washer.


I had a car on which I had to change the oil by slipping tubing down the dipstick tube and pumping it out with one of those hand pumps from Harbor Freight or someplace.*  Tedious, but improved my grip for shooting substantially.

^ Possible hint.

Terry

* I was getting to the point where I could not crawl around under the car.

[AmbulanceDriver]

My lawnmower with a Honda engine is the same way

[Unisaw]

My lawnmower with a Briggs & Stratton engine is the same way.  It's a pain, but not very frequently.

[Ben]

I had a car on which I had to change the oil by slipping tubing down the fill pipe and pumping it out with one of those hand pumps from Harbor Freight or someplace.*  Tedious, but improved my grip for shooting substantially.

^ Possible hint.

I have a pump, which I'll probably use when I start doing oil changes on my 4Runner, now that (yesterday) I got my last Toyotacare service. The 4Runner plug is a pain to get to on the gen5s.

Pump won't work on the small engines. I actually tried it on the generator the last time I changed oil, but I think the reservoir is too shallow with too little oil to get full submerging of the hose. The power washer engine only holds like 12oz, so I'd probably have to tip it anyway just to get the hose submerged.

[dogmush]

Partially cost savings,and partially people that couldn't tighten a plug crying about oil leaks.  

Despite Honda's recommendations I bet that they know the majority of those engines get one or two oil changes per life.

[lupinus]

Yep I've found this to be the case on a lot of small engines. I find it annoying as hell.


Sent from my iPhone. Freaking autocorrect.

[Ben]

I just changed it an hour ago. While I still think it's dumb, it's not quite as annoying as I thought it would be. Took all of ten minutes, with most of the time spent holding the thing tipped to make sure I got all the "first five hours" oil out. A little initial spillage, but I ended up just draining it into an old baking pan*, so I had a pretty big "catchment". :)  Next oil change will probably be a five minute job.

The only thing I'm still annoyed about is that the first change is where you might expect shavings or other contaminants to come out, and it doesn't seem like you can account for everything if you can't drain from the lowest point. I'll probably change it again in another few hours of engine time just to maybe catch more stuff.

* I actually use this pan on the Honda generator. While it has a drain plug, it's not the best setup either. Without lifting the heavy ass generator onto blocks, the baking pan is the only thing that will slide underneath (barely, on one corner) to catch the oil.

[K Frame]

I've seen that on many small engines.

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[Ben]

Well, went on a tear and changed the oil in all the small engines, including the Skillsaw. The only other stuff that needed tipping was my dad's Honda lawnmower and my saw. :)

[Kingcreek]

Don't bother with those cheap hand pumps.
If you have a shop vac and a 5 gal bucket with a lid (I snagged one from the recycle drop off) buy a length of cheap 1/4 flexible tubing. (I already had some scraps of pex type) drill a hole in the lid of the bucket and insert tubing TO THE BOTTOM of the bucket. If the lid has a pour bung it is exactly the right size for the shop vac hose- if not, cut a hole to fit and insert vac just enough for a snug fit.
Insert 1/4 line in oil fill or even dipstick tube to bottom. Turn on shop vac and watch all the oil get sucked into the bucket.
This is how I change oil on our little crossfire coup since it has about 4" of ground clearance and a belly pan shroud that has to be removed to access drain plug. I've used it on small engines also.

[MechAg94]

My Troy Built mower is nearly 10 years old.  I told myself I was going to change the oil for the first time this Winter, but never did.  Still running fine.  

But I have a small lawn and a basic push mower with no fancy stuff.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Don't bother with those cheap hand pumps.
If you have a shop vac and a 5 gal bucket with a lid (I snagged one from the recycle drop off) buy a length of cheap 1/4 flexible tubing. (I already had some scraps of pex type) drill a hole in the lid of the bucket and insert tubing TO THE BOTTOM of the bucket. If the lid has a pour bung it is exactly the right size for the shop vac hose- if not, cut a hole to fit and insert vac just enough for a snug fit.
Insert 1/4 line in oil fill or even dipstick tube to bottom. Turn on shop vac and watch all the oil get sucked into the bucket.
This is how I change oil on our little crossfire coup since it has about 4" of ground clearance and a belly pan shroud that has to be removed to access drain plug. I've used it on small engines also.

Thank you!!


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[Kingcreek]

Thank you!!


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Yer welcome!
I actually just get it started and let it siphon overnight which works fine with synthetic oil. I turn on the vac again just to make sure I get all I can but it works real good if you've got a pretty close fit in the bucket lid. All you need to do is create enough negative pressure inside the bucket to draw thru the tube.

[Ben]

Thank you!!


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Yeah, that's a slick trick!

[KD5NRH]

Pull about 1/4 of the oil, top up with Berryman's Chemtool, run for just a couple of minutes to warm up the oil, then drain.  It'll thin out the oil enough to keep it from sticking any extra crud to the inside of the crankcase.

With gear oil, I pull enough to take an entire can of Chemtool, but do the warmup before adding it.  Let it cool enough to comfortably keep a hand firmly on the outside of the casing before adding Chemtool, or things can get interesting.

[Kingcreek]

don't know anything about Berymans chemtool but we used to drain off about 2 quarts of oil and add 3 quarts of kerosene and run for a little bit in the older vehicles and farm trucks. Sometimes we would get so much gunk (like black cheese curds) we had to keep jabbing a screw driver in the drain hole to keep it draining.
I use synthetic oil in every combustion engine I own (and I have a lot of them) and haven't had to do anything like that for years.

[KD5NRH]

don't know anything about Berymans chemtool but we used to drain off about 2 quarts of oil and add 3 quarts of kerosene and run for a little bit in the older vehicles and farm trucks. Sometimes we would get so much gunk (like black cheese curds) we had to keep jabbing a screw driver in the drain hole to keep it draining.

Same concept, but a look at the Chemtool MSDS says it's mostly toluene, acetone and methanol, so it should thin things out a lot more.

[Kingcreek]

probably similar to Kano labs Kreen product.

[HeroHog]

ATF works well as an engine flush.

[Ben]

Possibly stupid question, but can you replace diesel for the kerosene as a mix for the flush? I'm actually thinking of doing it for my Skilsaw. I hadn't changed the oil in it in forever, and it came out kinda gunky. Skil says use kerosene, but I can't find any around here.

I've gone synthetic as well. I happened to have a case of 5-30W Mobil One left over after I sold my Trooper, and I can't use it in my current vehicles, so now I have about a decade supply of synthetic for the small stuff. :)

[Boomhauer]

don't know anything about Berymans chemtool but we used to drain off about 2 quarts of oil and add 3 quarts of kerosene and run for a little bit in the older vehicles and farm trucks. Sometimes we would get so much gunk (like black cheese curds) we had to keep jabbing a screw driver in the drain hole to keep it draining.

Same concept, but a look at the Chemtool MSDS says it's mostly toluene, acetone and methanol, so it should thin things out a lot more.

Bad *expletive deleted*ing idea. That's playing the "clog the oil pump pickup" lottery. I did Seafoam (similar to the Chemtool) to my truck once and got the same results as Kingcreek...but I was damn lucky not to clog the oil pump screen.

 

[KD5NRH]

probably similar to Kano labs Kreen product.

Looks like Kreen is mostly "severely hydrotreated petroleum distillates."

Bad *expletive deleted*ing idea. That's playing the "clog the oil pump pickup" lottery.

If you've got that much crud in there, it's eventually going to do just that anyway.  Not a bad idea to drop the pan every year or two anyway just to replace the gasket and have a look at the screen.  Puts you in a good spot to check the rod bearings while you're down there if the engine is old enough to have any doubts.

[Boomhauer]

Not a bad idea to drop the pan every year or two anyway just to replace the gasket and have a look at the screen

You gotta be shitting me...

[TechMan]

ATF works well as an engine flush.

When did the .gov get into engine flushing?