Briggs engine

I have an 17 year old 8 hp i/c briggs engine on my woodsplitter with 450 hours on it that smokes some on start up.You cant see any smoke after it warms up but you can still smell it.Although the engine is old it has relitively low hours on it in my eyes.The oil has been changed every 50 hours.Any thoughts on all the smoke on start up? The post on oil below has me thinking as some of the posts are quoting 1,000+ hours on small engines.Bill M.

The 'lil engines that get super long hours typically have oil filters.

Oil is getting sucked by the valve guides.
1. Use 20w50 oil.
2. Clean carbon from head and valves.

You might try to replace the breather / oil seperator,in the valve chamber, not very expensive. Atleast on the smaller flathead Briggs engines, those breather / oil seperators have a gasket that shrinks and blocks the oil drainback holes on the breather. When this happens, oil that should drain back to the crankcase, is sucked into the carb through the crankcase vent tube.
When they get bad enough, them make the engine use a lot of oil.

If it sits for long period of time between starts that will shorten its life by half. There are dry oil starts and then there are DRY oil starts.

Now that you mention it---

I just sold a garden tractor with a 20 hp 2 cylinder B&S engine. It had over 900 hours on it and was still healthy.

And it had an oil filter.

The old side valve Briggs engines with no oil filter are recommended to have oil changed at 25 hours. Chances of oil being sucked through a valve guide is highly unlikely. Is this engine an aluminum bore? Running double the hours on oil and an aluminum bore it's probably due for an oversize piston.
Pull the head. If the oil is coming past the rings, the top of the piston will be washed clean where the rings aren't sealing. If it's totally washed clean, it's leaking all the way around.

Cast iron lined cylinder.manual states oil change every 50 hours unless under heavy load or dusty conditions then every 25 hours.I didnt consider splitter use heavy duty usage as its not under load more than 50% of the time. It does sit for weeks to months between uses though.Bill M.

Have You checked Your AIR FILTER.. if it's stopped up it will suck harder and therfore, pull up Oil from case... Larry KF4LKU

re: High-hour small engines with oil filters

Pressurized oiling systems with a filter are all fine and dandy, but we have [i:82c6da6285]lots[/i:82c6da6285] of splash-lubricated, no-filter engines in the rental fleet with a ton of hours on them. Honda's GX series is one example. With proper maintenance practices, there's nothing wrong with good ol' splash-lubrication at all. On the other hand, seeing a filter screwed onto the side of the engine sometimes leads people to think that the filter is doing some engine maintaining itself....and the service schedule intervals get s t r e t c h e d out more than they should.

I'm not anti-pressure-lubed by any means, but if you've ever seen the amount of oil that an oil dipper flings everywhere inside the crankcase, you won't be concerned about a lack of lubrication anywhere. And if the engine gets serviced as it should, then dirty oil problems won't crop up either.

I remember back in the late 80's early 90's when the GX Hondas came out, a lot of people scoffed at their use of splash lubrication and lack of a filter. Some were even convinced that the top ends would surely suffer early failures. How could the rocker arms and such way up top receive adequate lubrication with just some splashing going on? Not surprisingly, proper engineering took care of that.

Smoke on startup can be caused by any number of things as already mentioned. One thing I wouldn't do, (and this is just me), is try to curb the oil consumption by going to a heavier oil. Engines I've seen where these kinds of viscosity experiments have been done, have always had more burnt and caked-on oil residue everywhere inside...particularly in places like ring grooves. What starts out as an attempt to "fix" oil consumption, ends up making things worse as heavier oil that doesn't drain back/doesn't get scraped off or burned off as completely from surfaces instead "burns on" in place and creates more hard black residue to seize rings and such.

The engine will burn less oil with straight weight 40 instead of 15W-40.
With an oil burner. Use a low ash oil for 2007 and later emissions diesels.
Check the aircleaner. It must be ingesting dirt to be worn at these hours.