On a whim, I started looking at Briggs and Stratton engines on Craigslist this week, and ended up getting a great deal on an antique horizontal shaft 3HP engine made in around 1989 or 1990 for just $20. It was owned by a retiree before this and she was just getting rid of junk in the garage. The engine did not start at the time, and that plays well into my plan of disassembling and learning how the engine works and fixing it.
Figure 1 shows the 3HP 4-cycle 3600 RPM Briggs and Stratton engine that I bought. This engine was made in Wisconsin, USA as seen in Figure 2. The model number is 80202 as seen in Figure 3 and the type number is 0142 as seen in Figure 4. If you look hard you can see that the code number is 6509093.
Figure 1. Engine on the day of purchase
Figure 2. Engine manufacturer label
Figure 3. Engine model number
Figure 4. Engine type and code numbers
I cleaned the exterior of the engine using Mineral Spirits from Home Depot and removed all the ancient grease and oil that was sticking to the engine.
Using the https://www.briggsandstratton.com website I found a few manuals for the engine. At this point, they all look similar but it helps to read all of them for the future.
- Parts Manual
- Operating and Maintenance manuals for models 80200-81299
- Operating and Maintenance manuals for models 80200, 82200, 130200, 132200
- Operating and Maintenance manual for 80202-0142 found using the manual search on the manufacturer’s website mentioned above.
Now the next steps are to read these manuals and start looking into why the engine does not start.
