Splitter engines

No. I ran my new splitter right away - made sure it was warmed up before pushing too much and while warming up I varied the rpms up and down some. I tried not to bog it down at first, but it is good for them to do some work right away and get the rings seated. The rings actually seat better by varying RPM's, so using it is good. As far as oil mine came with whatever from TSC and I swapped it out after the first 4 hours with synthetic 5w40.

My manual said to run for an hour with no load at half throttle and to change the oil after the 4hr mark........ SAE 30 for me on a 6.5 hp briggs

My MTD has a 5 Hp Tecumseh. I can't recall what they recommend for changing the oil, but I do mine once a year. Maybe it runs 5-10 hours a year. I run it about half throttle. Not a lot of strain on the engine. I just did it, 3/4 of a quart of straight 30 weight oil. Beware, most don't have a filter, so more often is better. This is the only thing I have that doesn't have Mobil 1 synthetic in it.


Reminds me of a story. Dad brought home the new lawn mower. He filled the gas, 1 pull it fired up, ran a few minutes. "Dad lets check the oil" I said. I did it, nothing in it. Can't be he said, a film of the oil they tested it with and drained, but no more. Luckily we shut it down before it did any damage.

I could be wrong, but if have had numerous BS engines on lawn mowers etc, I have never changed the oil and didn't run into any problems with the engines. I'm only asking, are you guys being over protective?

CHANGE THE OIL BEFORE 5 HOURS !!......I didn't, and blew the motor ......for the cost of oil, why chance it

BrotherBart said:

Yeah change it. I didn't ever change mine and the Briggs on my splitter had to be replaced after 19 years. When the carb got broken in two when a log rolled into it.

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Mine lasted a little over a year.....probably had a hundred or so hours on it

Will do, your post BB, not BB's made me check my oil, it was still clean, not blackish at all but thank you BB and BB.....

Beer Belly said:

CHANGE THE OIL BEFORE 5 HOURS !!......I didn't, and blew the motor ......for the cost of oil, why chance it

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CLICK ON THE PICS
Here's the Oil.....this is from the new motor after 4 hours


Here's the result....if you don't

That engine would have gone at 5 hours whether the oil was changed or not.

I only used 5w40 for cold starting in the winter and I had some left over in a jug. Otherwise 30 wt is fine in a Briggs, Honda's and OHV usually spec 10w30 to get the oil up in the head faster.

At work we have many Honda GX engines on compactors, generators, mixers and such and they go forever with minimal maintenance. All get yearly oil changes with SN 10w30 oil unless worked on for some other reason. Two of the generators get run 40 hours a week for 6 months out of the year and get yearly oil changes. They are hard mounted on the trucks and hard to change without spilling all over. They still last 4-5 years!

Actually, the Oil in the Vid was from the new motor after 4 hours of run time.....the Vid of the motor (old blown up motor) was from not changing the oil untill 100 hours, versus the recommended 5 hours.....not warrantied.....$500 later, splitter back up and running

I change the oil on a new engine before the 5 hour mark and then approximately every 25-30 hours after that. Being how cheap oil is, it's cheap insurance. A good synthetic oil these days is only $4-5 a quart if you shop around and two quarts will basically do three oil changes. Unless you're buying a Harbor freight replacement a new engine is at least $250 so spending 3-5 bucks a year to protect a 250 dollar engine doesn't seem like a big cost to me.

It's a good idea to do a couple short oil change intervals on new small engines, because they don't have an oil filter to catch all those particles from the engine breaking in. Engines with oil filters don't matter so much, because those particles get caught in the filter.