Governor Setting

marrt · Jul 29, 2002

Has anyone tried different governor settings? Sunday, when mowing, I decided to move the governor spring toward the air cleaner to experiment with some of the “more sensitive” governor settings. Power Trac’s ship with the governor spring in the “least sensitive” setting. While this ensures maximum RPMs from the engine at high idle, there’s little additional power overhead available for hills etc…. By moving the spring to one of the “more sensitive” positions closer to the air cleaner, I noticed that the high speed idle dropping some (I’m guessing 200 to 300 RPMs based on the Kohler service manual) but there seemed to be more power available when attacking hills with my mower. Almost like having a cruise control. Also, overall gas consumption seemed to fall significantly.

MossRoad · Jul 30, 2002

Very interesting. Do you have a way to take pictures of the different settings?

marrt · Jul 30, 2002

MR, here is a pic I grabbed from your web site (showing your spring, like mine originally, in the lowest setting). I’m having trouble downloading pictures with my digital camera.

From the image and my edits, I think you can get a pretty good idea regarding the settings I am talking about. Even thought RPMs are maximized in the less sensitive setting, the engine is slow to respond to load, even though more “headroom” is available. One can test this behavior by running the throttle to full power and then moving the governor with your hand. The RPMs with climb even higher. By putting the governor in the more sensitive setting, it responds quicker to engine loads and seems to deliver more power when a load is present. This observation is from about two hours worth of mowing. More experimentation is needed.

MossRoad · Jul 30, 2002

How embarrassing! /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif I ask for a picture and you send me one that I already took /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif Thanks. I’ll have to try it some time.

duane · Jul 31, 2002

Marrt,

The problem I had with going more sensitive with the governor is engine surge. (engine RPM constantly increasing and decreasing, worse under a light load). If it improves performance though, sounds like a great hint.

Duane