Preventative Engine Maintenance Is It Important

Getting the most from your small air-cooled engine is simply a matter of understanding it better. A helpful way to do this is to compare an aircooled engine to the engine in your car.

To begin with, the average car engine is rated at an average of about 200 hp at 4500rpm, while the average air-cooled engine is of between 4 & 35 hp at 3600rpm.

If you operate the car at about 60 km/h you are using approx. 10% of its total power, or 20 hp of the available 200 hp, with the engine running at around 1800rpm. In comparison, the air-cooled engine is almost always operated at Peak power (approx. 3600rpm).

In other words, if your car engine was operated at 3600rpm like your Briggs & Stratton engine, your car would be moving at approx 135 km/h and log approx 1080 km in an 8 hour day.

By further comparison, the average car fuel consumption is 8.5 litres per 100 km, with an average 70 lt fuel tank. So every 800 km you must add fuel to the tank, at which time you would normally check the oil (on average, once per week).

At normal operating speed, your air cooled engine logs the same 800 km in about 4 hours and is entitled to the same if not better, oil check as your car. If we calculate that out a bit further, that is 200km per hour x 6hrs running per day = 1200km per day x 5 days per week = 6000km per week x 48 weeks per year = 288,000 km per year!

At this point all similarity ends, as the air-cooled engine must operate under the most undesirable conditions possible, whilst the car engine is more or less treated with kid gloves.