Originally posted by: Eli
Originally posted by: Murpheeee
Originally posted by: Eli
/me raises hand
It should be easy to fix. Probably just a sticky linkage or spring.
Are you mechanically inclined at all? Take the air filter off and muck with the throttle, it should move smoothly and freely.
Start up the engine and observe what happens. Make sure the spring isn't twisted around a weird way or something, keeping tension on the throttle.
It probably isn't even a big deal, unless it's running full throttle when under no load.
You should be able to get the jist of things just by looking at it and watching it.
I am not sure if it's a mechanical govenor or an air-vane govenor without knowing what engine is on it.
Thanks. Engine is a 5 HP Techumseh
Probably mechanical then.
Inside the engine, there is a gear that has weights on it, fixed with springs. As the engine turns the gear, centrifugal forces try and fling the weights outward, defeating their springs. It is connected to a metal arm outside the engine.
There is a metal linkage from the govenor arm (outside the engine) to the throttle plate.
There is a spring from the throttle control to the throttle plate.
When you put the throttle control full throttle, it pulls on the spring, pulling the throttle open. The govenor now has to pull against the tension of the spring to close the throttle, which requires much more RPM- allowing it to run at the pre-determined maximum no load RPM, but not above.
If the engine bogs down, there is less force on the govenor arm(due to less centrifugal force on the weights), and the spring tension opens the throttle more.
That's the basic idea of how it works.
Now, there may not be anything wrong with the linkage and spring at all.
If you'll notice, on both the govenor arm and perhaps the throttle adjustment, there are multiple holes.
Putting the linkage and/or spring in the different holes changes the angle at which they connect, and therefor changes their default tension.
It could be that someone mucked with things and either purposefully or mistakenly put the spring and/or linkage in the wrong hole.. in which case the fix would be to simply move it up or down a hole and observe the changes.
Hope that helps.