Picked up a damaged Powerlite for $10 this summer. The dash was rammed with something like a pitchfork damaging the dash and case. On cleaning and firing it up the revs went off the map. Whatever pierced it went through the engine cowling and broke the governor vane.
The cowling was banged out, holes patched with JB Weld and got a new governor vane. It went right to very high revs and stuck there. Opened it up again and gave the arm more clearance but it would still stick at high revs at times. I’ve been in there about 4 times putzing with the fit but it still gets stuck somehow on high revs and I can’t see in there when it’s running to get at the problem. I gave up on it. It’s too ugly to sell with the damaged case and became a time pit so decided to use it as is until it blew up.
It turns out to be quite the machine and I’m getting used to the screaming of the high revs. It mostly sticks at 6100 rpm which is a bit to high but loaded it’s probably running around 5000-5500 and handles that fairly well.
It nets a pretty good improvement in distance and a bit better at the level of snow it can munch. It’s fine making long straight runs which keeps the RPMs down. On turning and no load it’s back to screaming.
What would be nice is to have some way to get it off and on high rev reliably. As is I have to bounce and shake it to get it to calm down to 4100 then wait for it to stick again for high rev. So far I can’t figure a way make it selectable so the best thing to do might be set it for 5600-5700 max and let it run high and normal on it’s own.
Without a governor arm there’s no way to Boratify it so I might look around for a 4.5hp MTD if they have a governor arm. Anyone got any suggestions for planting a control on a vane type?
