# Tecumseh vs Briggs & Stratton



## Kestral

As far as old flathead snowblower engines go is one engine better then the other?


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## sscotsman

Not really..
both have very good reputations, and both have engines that are 20, 30, 50, 60 years old and still going strong..

I read a thing on a garden tractor forum a few years back that discussed them, and one guy said something that has stuck with me: 
"If it's for summer, get a Briggs. If it's for winter, get a Tecumseh."

In a very general sense, most people seems to think Briggs has (in years past) had a small step-up in quality over Tecumseh, but IMO it's not a significant difference. For snowblowers, I consider them of equal quality.

Today Tecumseh is no longer making small gas engines at all, and all Briggs small engines (for snowbowers/lawn mowers/ garden tractors) are all made in China.

Scot


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## nt40lanman

The only thing I could say is my Tec 10hp pulls over pretty easy cold, but the 8hp briggs on a Toro I worked on was a bear to pull over cold.


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## sscotsman

Tecumseh was always better for the snowblower engines..they really owned that niche, and did all the research for making a good "winter engine"..For Briggs, it was always a secondary market...While conversely Briggs dominated the lawnmower market..which gets back to "If it's for summer, get a Briggs. If it's for winter, get a Tecumseh."

Scot


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## micah68kj

sscotsman said:


> Tecumseh was always better for the snowblower engines..they really owned that niche, and did all the research for making a good "winter engine"..For Briggs, it was always a secondary market...While conversely Briggs dominated the lawnmower market..which gets back to "If it's for summer, get a Briggs. If it's for winter, get a Tecumseh."
> 
> Scot


Gotta go along with ya Scot. Had both and I'd vote Tecumseh over Briggs for winter. Snow King engines are hard to beat.


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## UNDERTAKER

that's funny i always had better luck with briggs engines. The tecumseh always was a pain in the u know what to start. And always some thing breaking on it. Their sno-king engines were gutless up here in the minnesota snow.


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## Kestral

I have to say the 20 year old 11 HP B&S on my Toro Powershift is a gem of an engine. It starts easy and seems real strong I have also noticed it has quite a large oil pan seems to hold about a quart more then the 10 hp Tecumseh powered unit we have at work. I had an old Tecumseh powered Troy Built and it was great right until the con rod went through the side of the block! And yes the oil was fresh and full. I wonder sometimes if old Tecumseh motors were better built then the late model units before they stopped building them. I do know that the 11HP motor on my Toro is the same B&S that my grandfather had on his Wheel Horse C-111 tractor that has seen major use both summer and winter since 1979 and it has never been apart and still runs strong today. I often wonder if all them Tecumseh Snow King engines were used under summer heat as well as winter just how long they would hold up?


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## GustoGuy

Kestral said:


> I have to say the 20 year old 11 HP B&S on my Toro Powershift is a gem of an engine. It starts easy and seems real strong I have also noticed it has quite a large oil pan seems to hold about a quart more then the 10 hp Tecumseh powered unit we have at work. I had an old Tecumseh powered Troy Built and it was great right until the con rod went through the side of the block! And yes the oil was fresh and full. I wonder sometimes if old Tecumseh motors were better built then the late model units before they stopped building them. I do know that the 11HP motor on my Toro is the same B&S that my grandfather had on his Wheel Horse C-111 tractor that has seen major use both summer and winter since 1979 and it has never been apart and still runs strong today. I often wonder if all them Tecumseh Snow King engines were used under summer heat as well as winter just how long they would hold up?


Makes me wonder. I worked maintanece for a lawn cutting service as well as landscaping and cutting lawns when I was in college back 22 years ago and we had Briggs commercial engines and Kawasaki engines and 2 stroke small mower engines and a few Honda engines on a seed spreader and lawn dethatcher. I did lots of maintanece on the engines and replaced belts on the big Toro rider as well as helping to put a new rear end in the Ford truck we used. We kept track of oil consumption and we noticed that the Comercial Briggs engines would tend to use more oil the the Kawasaki's and the Kawasaki engines were a bit quieter and a little more fuel efficient. No Tecumsehs at this place. and the Honda engines were usually only lightly used in the spring and fall for reseeding and dethatching and just changed the oil on them. I have seen a few blown rods on the 7hp on up Tecumseh in pictures and for sale on Craigslist and most of the time when they blow a rod it is usually due to low oil since they were very intolerant of low oil levels. However they could blow even when you throttle them down after blowing your driveway with a full crankcase of oil so I feel it was a poor designed connecting rod and having your engine grenade with the connecting rod flying threw the block doesn't inspire you to run out and buy another Tecumseh. NR racing torture tested the stock Predator 212cc engine at very high rpms and ran them low on oil even until they were out to see what would fail and how and they experienced no connecting rod failures and they would rev them up past 5600rpm when they went into valve float and would go no higher in rpms. With stiffer springs and billet flywheel and connecting rod and they have been known to spin at 8000rpms putting out 14hp.
How many threads have you read about Tecumseh engines blowing rods just here on Snowblower forums compared to other engine makes actually blowing the connecting rod. I think they had a pretty significant failure rate albiet less than 1% but when you are talking about hundreds of thousands of these engines which were made then 1% could mean several thousand engines blowing rods or enough that there is a good chance that you would know someone who engine did blow.


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## sscotsman

GustoGuy said:


> How many threads have you read about Tecumseh engines blowing rods just here on Snowblower forums compared to other engine makes actually blowing the connecting rod. I think they had a pretty significant failure rate albiet less than 1% but when you are talking about hundreds of thousands of these engines which were made then 1% could mean several thousand engines blowing rods or enough that there is a good chance that you would know someone who engine did blow.


Also, this is a snowblower forum..Historically, on snowblowers Tecumsehs outnumber Briggs perhaps 99 to 1. So you are 99% more likely to hear about a blown Tecumseh than you are a blown Briggs...doesnt mean that Tecumseh has an *actual* failure rate higher than Briggs, it just means we are far more likely to hear about a Tecumseh failure...

If the population of Engine B is 100 engines, and one of them fails, we might never hear about that one.

If the population of Engine T is 10,000 engines, and 100 of them fail, we are far more likely to hear about 2 or 3 out of those 100. 

In both cases the failure rate is 1%.

I have no idea what the actual failure rate is..
Im simply pointing out that its possible that if we hear about more Tecumseh failures than Briggs failures, that could be because there are a lot more Tecumsehs to hear about..

Scot


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## ranvette

What you really would need to know is how many had the engines from new when they threw a rod.The reason i say this is a lot go threw several owners before the engine fails.A lot of times what will happen is someone runs the engine very low on oil.It gets noisey and they add oil.The engine seems just fine after.Now lets say its sold and someone changes the oil each season for several seasons and always make sure its full.Now on there third season with fresh and full oil it throws a rod.The reason is the rod bearing surface was damaged a few years back.I have seen 2 throw rods right in front of me 1 was a 7hp and the other was a 6 hp.The 7 was my fathers he ran it low on oil and the engine seized up.1 hour later we filled it with oil and it turned over and sounded just fine.After that a good eye was kept on its oil level it ran for 2 or 3 seasons and threw a rod threw the block.I think we know for sure what happened here the rods bearing surface had been damaged of course.The 6 hp i saw throw the rod was under full load with no oil to speak off in it and threw a rod.I dont know any history of that motor.The point to this is the sins of past owners cause may of these motors to fail on new owners.Unless you can look at the rod you could never know if it shows sighns of being run low on oil.I do have a 1968 ariens 6 hp original engine which i have had since new.The engine throws better than new only because a few years back i increased its rpm to 3600.And from new it ran at 3350.It has a tach on it now and i run it between 3300 and 3600 useing extra power as needed.Who knows i will see sooner or later if it manages to throw a rod.I do have a very low hour 7 HP snow king in storage and ready to go if it does.I just cant bring myself to put it on with the old 6 running as good as it does.Also note normal oil consumption can be up to 1 oz per cyl per hour under full load on these engines or Brigs engines.Some storms both my 6 and 8 hps use some oil and other storms they dont.The key is full engine load.


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## micah68kj

sscotsman said:


> Also, this is a snowblower forum..Historically, on snowblowers Tecumsehs outnumber Briggs perhaps 99 to 1. So you are 99% more likely to hear about a blown Tecumseh than you are a blown Briggs...doesnt mean that Tecumseh has an *actual* failure rate higher than Briggs, it just means we are far more likely to hear about a Tecumseh failure...
> 
> If the population of Engine B is 100 engines, and one of them fails, we might never hear about that one.
> 
> If the population of Engine T is 10,000 engines, and 100 of them fail, we are far more likely to hear about 2 or 3 out of those 100.
> 
> In both cases the failure rate is 1%.
> 
> I have no idea what the actual failure rate is..
> Im simply pointing out that its possible that if we hear about more Tecumseh failures than Briggs failures, that could be because there are a lot more Tecumsehs to hear about..
> 
> Scot


Agree with you again. I see dozens and dozens of Tecumseh snow engines for every one Briggs. Your post makes sense.


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## detdrbuzzard

seems like from about 1980 up until tecumseh went out of biusness almost every snowblower you looked at had their motor on it


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## GustoGuy

ranvette said:


> What you really would need to know is how many had the engines from new when they threw a rod.The reason i say this is a lot go threw several owners before the engine fails.A lot of times what will happen is someone runs the engine very low on oil.It gets noisey and they add oil.The engine seems just fine after.Now lets say its sold and someone changes the oil each season for several seasons and always make sure its full.Now on there third season with fresh and full oil it throws a rod.The reason is the rod bearing surface was damaged a few years back.I have seen 2 throw rods right in front of me 1 was a 7hp and the other was a 6 hp.The 7 was my fathers he ran it low on oil and the engine seized up.1 hour later we filled it with oil and it turned over and sounded just fine.After that a good eye was kept on its oil level it ran for 2 or 3 seasons and threw a rod threw the block.I think we know for sure what happened here the rods bearing surface had been damaged of course.The 6 hp i saw throw the rod was under full load with no oil to speak off in it and threw a rod.I dont know any history of that motor.The point to this is the sins of past owners cause may of these motors to fail on new owners.Unless you can look at the rod you could never know if it shows sighns of being run low on oil.I do have a 1968 ariens 6 hp original engine which i have had since new.The engine throws better than new only because a few years back i increased its rpm to 3600.And from new it ran at 3350.It has a tach on it now and i run it between 3300 and 3600 useing extra power as needed.Who knows i will see sooner or later if it manages to throw a rod.I do have a very low hour 7 HP snow king in storage and ready to go if it does.I just cant bring myself to put it on with the old 6 running as good as it does.Also note normal oil consumption can be up to 1 oz per cyl per hour under full load on these engines or Brigs engines.Some storms both my 6 and 8 hps use some oil and other storms they dont.The key is full engine load.


If the connecting rod bearing surfaced develops wear it could lead to a condition called piston slap where the rod becomes loose in it's conection to the crankshaft or to the piston. This would cause movement and acelerated wear and could cause them to blow a few years after a low oil condition which damaged them. Some engines have been torture tested to see what needs to be done to build them up to performance engines (hot rod) for racing. With the HF Predator 212cc it was found that the stock Flywheel is considered unsafe with rpms over the governed amount. While there was no connecting rod failures as a blown rod a billet forged aluminum connecting rod is available which is over twice as strong as the stock cast rod and therefore recomended in high rpm running. With Tecumseh I feel the engines had no redunency with ability to run at rpms faster than stock so they can almost be guarenteed to blow if you tun more rpms than what they were designed to run.


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## ranvette

Tecumseh service info states 3600 is max rpm.Although i do think i saw one application as listed as 3700 but i could be wrong.The main point is there is no need to go over 3600.And most snow king blowers i have found are running at 3400 or under.Thats the reason i have tachs on my blowers and them turned up to 3600.The engine is made to run at that design spec and thats all she wrote.Plus they make full power at 3600 and there is a nice differance in there performance turned up to max rpm.Its just not the motor to run higher than 3600.And under less load conditions i run them at as low as 3000 to 3300.I did read on some go kart forum a while back that they run them at 4000 rpm or a little better and they go for a while before blowing.


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## nt40lanman

I run my tec low. I'd guess 3000 or less. I'll tach it when I get a chance.


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## 94EG8

The biggest problem with the old flathead briggs & strattons is the carb, they're compatively hard to work on (the emulsion tube has to come out to get the 2 halves apart) and they're expensive. Here in Canada IIRC the two halves are a combined $500. Retail on a Tecumseh carb is about $70

That said, if everything is working right the briggs & stratton is a smoother engine, the governor linkage doesn't tend to freeze up like a tecumseh causing the engine to scream wide open, and even when you take into account the much larger amount of tecumsehs out there, the B&S don't tend to throw rods as often.


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