kohler courage again

wfw

Member
posted awhile about my mower with a kohler courage that had quit running. I found a 17 hp briggs engine and have got it installed and working. had two
problems. one there was a belt pulley stuck on the briggs crankshaft. had to cut it off. wheel puller would not pull it off due to the pulley bending
out of shape. other problem was getting the wiring right. still need to check and see if it is charging the battery. also, the briggs got oil in the
cylinder and was hydrolocked. pulling the plug and spinning the engine fixed that. it runs good and mower is back in businness.
 
You'll like the Briggs. That Kohler Courage has got to be the worst engine Kohler ever came out with.
 
I'll take that one step further. The Kohler Courage is the worst small engine ever built. It's amazing it works at all with all the design flaws.
 
I repair lawn mowers and garden tractors on the side. A guy called me to repair his Craftsmen tractor. He told me "the driveshaft has come loose". When I got there, it was a Troy Bilt with a Kohler 19 HP Courage engine. The top drive belt had come off the pulleys, the brake rod was disconnected, and the blades looked like the edge of a table. I put the belt back on (which had been scarred somehow), advised him to get a new belt, sharpened and balanced his blades, and reattached the brake rod to the spring it was supposed to go on. I then had a serious talk about the undesirability of the Courage. I told him you have to be courageous to own a Courage, get rid of this thing, ASAP! A Couple of weeks went by, and he called me to tell me the belt had come off again, and he was going to order another one.
 
At the risk of jinxing myself I have to say that I have a 2005 Gravely ZT40 with a Courage Command 15HP motor and it has never given me a minutes trouble. Did I just get lucky or what???

I wish I had let the dealer install an hour meter on it when I bought it but I was too cheap. This mower has mowed 1.5-2 acres it whole life and I have used it pretty hard at times. Regular oil/filter changes with Castrol 20W-50 and air filter cleaned/changed regularly too. I have NO complaints.
 
There is a difference between the courage and command engines, the command is a higher dollar engine and much better than the courage.
 
It's not too late to install an hour meter yourself. They are inexpensive and just a one wire hookup. I put one on my Kohler.
 
This sounds like a testament for Courage engines. No maintenance and keeps on running. How would an engine be responsible for throwing a belt?
 
Everyone gives the Courage engine a bad rep, and I guess some of it is deserved. But some comes solely from Big Business (Box stores) wanting to make a quick buck. Off of people like us.

Early On, As Soon as Kohler knew they had problems with the early engines cracking, they let their customers know. The customers (MTD, Husqvarna, etc.) let their customers know. Their customers, the 'big box stores' said "Ship them." So Kohler paid a big price for other people's greed. Still paying the price, as a matter of fact.

And yet, at my job, I service some of those early spec-number single cylinder Courage engines that are just racking up the hours and show no signs of failing. . . .
At least SOME of those engines were put together right.
 
I didn't blame the engine for throwing the belt, just have read all the online chatter about the extremely high failure rate on this particular motor. It seems the screws that hold the cases together back out and catch the flywheel, and that cracks the cases causing an oil leak.
 

I own a Country Clipper zero turn equipped with the 20 horsepower Courage engine. Going on 5 or 6 years now with zero problems.

This discussion reminds me of the arguments of many years ago concerning the Briggs versus the Tecumseh. Some claimed the Briggs was better, others were happy with the Tecumseh. I had experience with both and I can tell you that there really was no difference. They both were good for about the same number of hours before they would begin burning oil. The only slight difference was that you could usually milk a few more hours of use out of the Briggs, versus the Tecumseh that would self-destruct when pushed too hard. Both engines were flat worn out, and if you wanted something you could depend on, you replaced them.
 
Boy we are on opposite sides of the fence.......you are lucky with your Courage and I hated the governor on Tecumseh so bad that I refused any
equipment powered by them.
 
Even if 90% or 95% of engines don't have problems, anyone in industry will tell you that even a 5% catastrophic failure rate is unacceptable, and unsustainable. Even 1% is a serious issue, and enough to cause public sentiment to turn against you.
 

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