Gator Kawasaki engine failure

An outdoor maintenance company called me and asked if I would look at a JD Gator that threw a rod. I pulled it and found what Kawasaki calls a shaft laying on the engine platform. This shaft is held in the block by four nuts on studs which were nowhere to be found. The shaft slides into a counterweight, which, since it was not in the correct position, beat the case until it split it. I was told it developed a slight leak recently, but they kept it topped off. The young man driving it never had a chance once it fell out of the block. Anyone ever seen this before? I don't work on Gators. They are ordering a new engine which I'm sure won't be cheap.

Lots of different model Gators out there,which model?
I have had a 6x4 since new in 2003 and it has almost 500hrs with not major issues

Blame the dim witts that kept operating a machine with a known defect.

That counter balance weight slide will fail if the oil is not kept changed and full. I have also seen them fail more often if guys run too heavy of oil in them. It seems that 15w-40 will have it happen sometimes. They call for 10w-30 in my books.

I bought a real nice JD 325 lawn mower with the slide broke. They where lucky in that it did not break the block just the slide pin in the case. Cost me a complete engine tear down but just a few hundred in parts to get it going again. Youngest son has mowed with it now for several years.

I would first check with small engine warehouse. Don't know if they have a kawaski. I have seen their price list and they want $1200 for a 20 hp kohler and everyone else wants over $1800.

I've seen several of the 425 and 445 JD garden tractors that the Kawa engine flew apart under 700 hrs.

It's a 4x2 with gas pedal start. Engine number is FE290D.

Check this out. Small engine warehouse says that 310 people have used a substitute engine.

George
Small engine warehouse

I have seen this happen on 3 gators, all of which were 6 wheelers. It happened on mine and two of my neighbors. Because I had seen it happen before, I was able to catch it quick enough when it happened to mine. I found that it starts with a small oil leak. Since these gators hold less than 2 quarts of motor oil, a small leak can cause it to lose half of its' oil quickly. You can also cause this problem by spilling oil and not cleaning it up. But once the oil is under the engine you are going to have a problem. There are only 4 bolts holding the motor on this gator. They are metric bolts, but they are about 3/8" in diameter and about 1 inch long. All three that I have worked on, had no lock washers on them and were not lock-tited in. What I have found is the oil gets in the bottom of the frame, spreads out, and gets on those bolts. After that, it will work it's way up the threads and the vibration will loosen them. The driver should be able to feel the extreme vibration in the motor when the bolts loosen up. One of my neighbors, only had 3 bolts hanging out of his when he asked me to look at it. The other neighbor had no bolts in his and the crankshaft had damaged the housing on the motor. On mine; my grandson was going to drive it and noticed it was knocking when he started it. He turned it off and came and got me to look at it. All 4 bolts were loose, and since I had seen this before I knew exactly what the problem was. The reason mine got to that point was that it was being used every day and we had not checked the oil. The bottom of the pan was wet with oil.