Briggs & Stratton Enters My Shit List

[ka8ncr]

I was given a Husqvarna z46 mower a couple years ago as a gift, purchased from a big box store. Wonderful apparatus, except the engine. We had a couple summers of unusually hot dry weather, so the mower had about 15 hours on it when it started running like crap. I suspected a common ailment with motors of that vintage, blown head gasket. I contact the store, they say "bring it in", I say "no way, I'll never see it again".

There is a dealer and authorized service center (probably the same one that the big box store uses) on the other side of the county, I pay them $100 to pick it up and a couple weeks later, they say "yup, sure enough, blown head gasket". Great, fix it.

Except B&S won't honor the repair with a tick of a dent on the intake manifold, which my oldest managed to do backing it into a tree. I have to shell out almost $200 in parts and another hour and a half of labor in order for B&S to honor their warranty for a problem that should have never happened at 15 hours. I checked with another service center and they did confirm that B&S won't honor warranty repairs with that type of damage. Crappy American product.

Of course a year later, Husqvarna switched to Kohler engines.