# Is Tecumseh gone or bought out?



## Thekidmechanic05 (Dec 4, 2018)

I know that they don’t make Tecumseh engines anymore but are they really dead or bought out?


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## UNDERTAKER (Dec 30, 2013)

* As far as I know or Really even care they are DEAD and GONE!!!!!!*


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## Dauntae (Nov 10, 2016)

Closed down in 2008 and I think it was LCT that bought them, May have used there designs some but now are going with there own design (yet another Honda clone lol) and don’t even see the snow king label much any more.


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## vinnycom (Nov 6, 2017)

rip


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## JLawrence08648 (Jan 15, 2017)

I thought Briggs & Stratton bought them 10+ years ago then shut them down. I believe LCT bought Lawson which is being made under the Lawson label.


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## paulm12 (May 22, 2015)

2001
Liquid Combustion Technology (LCT) is founded by in Travelers Rest, SC.

2009
Tecumseh Products relocated from Tecumseh, Michigan to Pittsfield Charter Township, Michigan.

2007
Tecumseh Power Company’s former gasoline engine and powertrain product lines are sold to Platinum Equity, LLC which continues to do business as Tecumseh Power.

2008
Tecumseh Products Company closes its small engine manufacturing division and sells off its Peerless transmissions business unit to Husqvarna Outdoor Products.

2009
Tecumseh officially closed its doors in February when Platinum Equity announces that Tecumseh Power Company had sold certain assets of its engine business to Certified Parts Corporation (CPC) of Janesville, WI, including all existing and unfinished engine parts inventory, tools to make finished product and certain intellectual property assets.

CPC also assumes responsibility for warranty of previously manufactured Tecumseh engines.

In an interview on February 10, 2009, Certified Parts Corporation President Jim Grafft stated “that he plans to move the engine operation to Rock County, Wisconsin, where he owns three facilities in Janesville and one in Edgerton, and will initially supply parts for Tecumseh Power engines. Grafft also said that his company could eventually resume engine production, which Tecumseh Power ceased in December 2008”.

2010
Certified Parts Corporation (CPC) enters into an agreement with Liquid Combustion Technology (LCT) to jointly manufacture air-cooled engines for the outdoor power equipment market. The agreement provided CPC with engineering, manufacturing, and sales capabilities allowing it to reintroduce the Snow King line of snow thrower engines and other engines formerly manufactured and sold by Tecumseh Power. The engines are exclusively represented by LCT, and sold under the Snow King, Lauson, and LCT brands and serviced exclusively by CPC and the existing Tecumseh Power dealer/distributor network. Traditionally, the Snow King line of engines has powered more snowthrowers than all other brands combined.

LCT’s horizontal 4-stroke gasoline engine offering was extended by this agreement and allowed CPC and LCT to provide single cylinder and V-twin vertical engines to outdoor power equipment manufacturers. According to Larry Zeman, VP of Winter Engine Products for LCT, “This establishes LCT as an engine manufacturer of choice as it continues to engineer a new generation of power.”

In short, Tecumseh engines and parts are currently manufactured by LCT, CPC and Lauson Engines.


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## Dauntae (Nov 10, 2016)

good info in that post, Thank you and I knew LCT was connected somehow, Now I know.


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## GoBlowSnow (Sep 4, 2015)

The classic techumseh design that was on the machines from the 70s to the early 2000s that everyone (well mostly everyone) loved, while a true good engine- couldn't meet the new emissions standards. Major rework/redesign would have been required.


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## Thekidmechanic05 (Dec 4, 2018)

Wow. I’ve had more techs then any other engine combined. They are tanks


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## SimplicitySolid22 (Nov 18, 2018)

*I texted Nancy to ask for an update!!!
*

*
*

*Certified Parts Corporation Wins Favorable Legal Decision against Platinum Equity and Rudolf Strobl *


September 18, 2017 06:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time 
JANESVILLE, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Certified Parts Corporation (CPC) announced today that it has won a seven-figure damage award against Platinum Equity Advisors LLC and one of its former employees, Rudolf Strobl, President of TECUMSEHPOWER, in a recently concluded case in Rock County, Wisconsin. Certified Parts Corporation is a world recognized leader in procurement and sales of OEM parts for the off-road industry with 16,000 dealers worldwide. Platinum Equity is a Beverly Hills, California based private equity firm with more than $11 billion dollars under management that was founded by Tom Gores. 
At issue in the recently concluded case (#11-CV-677) was whether Platinum Equity’s portfolio company TECUMSEHPOWER had delivered all of the small engine related assets that CPC had purchased from it as part of a 2009 asset purchase agreement (APA). Platinum Equity, and its Connecticut based attorneys, maintained that CPC received everything it was entitled to under the APA. CPC prevailed upon the Court that Platinum Equity must be ordered to deliver the assets they still had control over, pay damages for those assets that could not be recovered, and their counsel be admonished for withholding critical documents during the trial. 
After a lengthy trial, the Court ruled that CPC was entitled to a variety of intellectual property still in existence and over a million dollars towards the loss of hard assets that Platinum Equity and Strobl were involved in disposing elsewhere. The Court also admonished Platinum Equity’s counsel for wrongfully withholding Platinum Equity documents from the case. CPC has since recovered the intellectual property, and received the total judgment paid promptly by Platinum Equity to expedite conclusion before an appeal by CPC. 
James G. Grafft, founder and owner of CPC said, “The judgment against Strobl and Platinum Equity for damages and legal fees combined to exceed what I originally paid for the assets. The Court agreed with our assertions that Platinum Equity acted in bad faith through its tortious interference and conversion, with an improper motive. It was unfortunate, as the Court found, that there were actions done in spite and motivated out of a desire to see CPC fail in our new ventures. We feel vindicated that not only did the Court hold Strobl and Platinum accountable, but that the ventures they wanted to see us fail in, are succeeding.” 
Grafft continued, “While we were pleased with the judgment results, we were just as eager to put the intellectual property to use in bringing back engines into production that were long staples in the snow thrower, generator and lawn and garden markets. We are excited to return some of these engines to their former glory under their trademarked names of “TECUMSEHPOWER, Lauson and Snow King.”


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## RedOctobyr (Mar 2, 2014)

GoBlowSnow said:


> The classic techumseh design that was on the machines from the 70s to the early 2000s that everyone (well mostly everyone) loved, while a true good engine- couldn't meet the new emissions standards. Major rework/redesign would have been required.


Is that because they were flatheads? I have an OHV Tecumseh. That certainly doesn't guarantee that it was a clean running engine, but it was at least a more modern design.


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## tlshawks (Feb 9, 2018)

Back in the late 1990's, I built outboard motors for Mercury Marine in Fond du Lac WI. A lot of the new hires with me were former Tecumseh employees who were jumping ship because they felt the company was sliding downhill and would go under.

Ironically, all those that were new hires were soon laid off permanently from Mercury Marine like me.


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## Dannoman (Jan 16, 2018)

I love my 1999 MTD 10-HP Tecumseh. It eats snow like a hungry dog on a T bone.


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## Spectrum (Jan 6, 2013)

From my perspective the reason Tecumseh had a run in snowblower dominance was that they could bundle 4 stroke and 2 stroke product. This was the era when the 2 stroke single stage machines were coming into their own. Tecumseh had a viable 2 stroke line and held much of the industry hostage forcing their 4 stroke product on manufacturers.


B&S took a shot at the 2 stroke market but they bombed out.



Toro didn't want to put up with it and bought LawnBoy / OMC


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## FlamingSpaghetti (Jan 8, 2018)

I personally like Tecumseh engines. I find them to be relatively easy to work on and generally give no issues when tuned properly. I've had many of them opened up before and they're rather well built despite having not the best connecting rods. I much prefer their crankshaft bearings and cylinder sleeves over B&S as most, if not all, are cast iron sleeved. Out of all of the Tecumseh engines I've worked on, only one needed a connecting rod and that is because it ran at a constant 4000 RPM. It's a shame they went under.


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## SnoThro (Feb 20, 2016)

Tecumseh is alive and well and never went out of business. Their core business was, and currently still is, AC/refrigeration. What was dumped was their small engine segment which, in my opinion, they never cared much about. They hardly spent any money on R&D in roughly 60 years of operation. Tear open a Lauson turned Tecumseh from 1960 and a L-Head from the 2000s and there are almost no changes. As soon as EPA mandates kicked in they complied with what they could for minimal effort then sold it off. 


I like the company, like the history of the company, and was sad that domestic competition was gone but I don't really care for the way management handled it in the slightest.




Spectrum said:


> From my perspective the reason Tecumseh had a run in snowblower dominance was that they could bundle 4 stroke and 2 stroke product. This was the era when the 2 stroke single stage machines were coming into their own. Tecumseh had a viable 2 stroke line and held much of the industry hostage forcing their 4 stroke product on manufacturers.


Don't really agree. Single stages as we know them today didn't really come into their own until the 80s and even then it was really only Toro making an effort to push them nation wide. Biggest most obvious reason was that Tecumseh had an established manufacturing capacity for 4-stroke horizontal shaft engines and a reliable design for cold weather use. The best engine Briggs had during the same time frame were either poorly optimized modified warm weather engines or their enormous L-Head which was quite a bit more expensive to produce and purchase and had a lower power to weight ratio. Briggs couldn't really be bothered to tool up just to capture a very limited market segment that already had established competition. You saw this again around 2010 when Briggs attempted to fill the void and create dedicated manufacturing for a single cylinder horizontal shaft engine and they found the profit and demand just wasn't there so they sent the whole line to be made by a Chinese supplier and concentrated solely on vertical shaft engine production. This still holds true today with all Briggs single cylinder horizontals being made in China, including Vanguards.

Its the same story with Honda. Cheap GC vertical shaft engines are made in the US by the millions, more expensive commercial horizontal shaft GX engines were left to Thailand simply due to supply and demand.


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## Dusty (Dec 13, 2018)

Yet the true Tecumseh company was the only company that had their own OHV design. Everyone else including Briggs just went with that same slant head OHV that was originally made by Honda. I give credit to Tecumseh for having thought outside the box and trying their own style of OHV's. I have a 13hp OHV and that engine runs awesome. Its a shame they went under, nobody else has thought outside the box since. Their are millions of Tecumseh's still going strong, their transmission are still working hard. Tecumseh may have sorta lived on thru LCT, buy those are also just slant head OHV clones, like all the rest. One thing I will say, LCT's customer support is great. I needed valve parts for a 208cc on an Ariens Sno-Tek. I contacted LCT, they sent out the parts fast, free of charge. So they are doing their best to be a reliable company since 90% of Ariens have LCT engines now...


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