I thought I'd post another project I'm working on. Most of you already know I have a love for the old cast iron Briggs engines, and especially the Model N lineup. There are so many different variations of the Model N, it can make you dizzy. I've been working for years at trying to get as many good examples of the different variations of the Model N as possible. I have acquired yet another one that I didn't have yet. This is a 45 Briggs NR2, and has a 2:1 gear reduction built into the block. It funny, I purchased this believing it was an NR6, which is visually identical to the NR2, and are more much more common the the NR2. It didn't have an id tag, and the seller had no clue what it was, so I was very surprized when it arrived, and the engine rotated twice for every rotation of the pto. Needless to say I was very pleased, as these are much harder to come by.
The engine was in rough shape, but still had lots of potential. Once I opened it up, I found it had a .020 over piston in it, a .010 under crank, and replacement valve guides had been installed. Both the piston, and cylinder looked great, but the rings were wore out. I tried finding .020 piston rings for it, but I never did. Eventually, I found a complete Briggs .020 piston assembly, which came with new rings, so I went that route. The crank, and the .010 undersized rod were in perfect shape, so all was good there. The valve guides were still in decent shape, but the intake valve had already been cut one to many times, so I located a new new valve. I cut both seats, and then lapped the valves back in. I'm currently working on getting it all painted up. This engine should run very well, as it tested at 120 psi on its compression test as you can see in the video below. Thats amazing compression for these old engines! Its magneto is also putting out a very strong spark, as you can see in the video. The OE carb was very corroded, but I had a good rebuildable core on the shelf that I used instead. The original PTO oil seal can no longer be found, but after taking some measurements, I found a modern seal that fit perfectly.
I'm very thankful to have other good friends that are Briggs collectors as well. Thanks to Den, a good friend who has a much larger collection than I do, I now have the correct Briggs Type # for this engine, so I can get a new ID tag made.
I decided to replace this engines original shroud with an identical one thats in far better shape. Aside from the rust, someone had done some horrible welding to the original shroud! While it could have been repaired, I had one on my spare parts shelf, thats in much better shape, so I took the easy way out!
Here are a buch of pics, and a video of where I'm currently at. Thanks
This is something I've been wanting to do for awhile, and I finally did it yesterday. I pulled out all my old Briggs Model N's, as well as a Model U, Model I, and a 6s, and ran ran them all at the same time (22 engines). It was fun, although it was a bit more work than I thought it was going to be. When this many engines are running, its difficult to hear the exhaust note of each engine so that I could get the fuel mixture set correctly on the carburetor. In this video, the newest engine is a 1952, and the oldest is a 1940. There was one engine (my lever start) that I flooded, so it wasn't running in the first video, but I did eventually get it fired, and showed it running in the very short second video. Anyway, here are a couple videos and pics. Thanks
