by bgsengine » Fri Nov 27, 2020 8:22 pm
oil gushing out dipstick tube depends largely on whether the bottom of the tube is immersed in the oil sump or not, on these, if it is a horizontal shaft which I am guessing it is, they terminate at top of crankcase , so they won't be immersed. As for your compression 70-75 is still a little low , so I would tend to suspect worn rings (does it burn oil? - that is, do you have to regularly add oil?) and finally as noted earlier, *some* amount of oil coming out the breather tube is relatively normal as the oil vapor condenses inside the tube, you'll always have some drip.. But when you had breather apart did you check for presence of your filter mesh? as old as it is, quite likely the mesh (which was a sort of fiber mesh similar to steel wool) has broken down and disintegrated over time.. if that mesh isn't there, or in good shape, then it isn't collecting the oil vapor like it would have if it was new, so your oil vapor is misting out the tube and being collected there on the tube , which then obviously drips down into the intake.. But if the amount of oil is really excessive (that is, if engine is burning off a lot of it and smoking until the tube is unhooked from intake) then I'd say you probably have worn rings.. and given the age (and very iffy availability of parts) even if it was worth re-ringing (assuming cylinder bore is good, not tapered or worn out of round) , it'd probably cost as much if not more to rebuild it than to replace it with a Harbor Freight Predator, or even a Briggs service replacement engine.. You might luck out and find some new old stock short block listed somewhere for cheap, but the one I found when looking at options for our troy-bilt tiller, the asking price they had up for that NOS short block was considerably more than even the new Briggs Vanguard (and for the price they wanted, I could have bought three Predator engines)
How poor are they who have not patience. What wound did ever heal, but by degrees? - Iago (Othello Act II, Scene 3)