I have just rebuilt my Howard 350 rotavator and, to my amazement, it started third pull tonight. The rebuild was of the gearbox and chaincase rather than the engine so I suppose it wasn't *that* surprising but still.
Anyway, I'm still puzzling over the throttle cable and linkage a bit and would appreciate any help anyone can offer on how it's supposed to be. I suspect it had been bodged somewhat before I took it apart and rebuilt it so reassembly has involved a certain amount of guesswork.
The engine is a Kohler 141 with a centrifugal governor, I think I have that and the linkage to the throttle butterfly set up OK, it runs reasonably sanely. However the throttle control seems a bit odd as the lever only travels about a quarter of its possible travel to go from idle to full throttle. It seems to me as if the throttle lever may not be original but I might be wrong, it's a plastic quadrant sort of thing with a bowden cable to the governor end of the throttle control. The inner of the bowden cable is solid and has a 'dog leg' kink in the end to engage in a metal disk on the governor end of the throttle linkage. Is this the way it's normally set up?
The second bit that seems not quite right to me is the silencer which fits very close above the governor end of the throttle linkage and actually stops the throttle opening fully because the governor lever that has a link to the butterfly valve hits the back of the silencer before it's fully open. The silencer just sits on two studs in the block with a thin gasket between it and the block. I could well imagine there should be a thicker spacer there, am I right?
A photo of how it should look or a page from a manual would be very welcome.