Mike Naglich
On your 1450 oil burning issue, try a good 30 wt oil first (straight 30 weight, not the multi viscosity) I have a couple lawn engines that burns oil, or uses oil if using a multi viscosity oil such as 20w-50, 10w-30 etc, but no consumption when using the straight weight oils. I also use either Delo 400 HD 30, or Shell Rotella HD 30, both of these are outstanding oils, and will hold up to the hard use of the air cooled lawn engines, cost is around $13 a gallon. By the way one of the motors that consumed oil was a new Craftsman DYT 4000 with a B&S 24 hp Intek. I "broke it in" went to a synthetic oil Mobil 1 even, and one of the valves/push rods gummed up, and froze up, I tore it apart cleaned the gum up, buffer the push rod, and lapped the valve in best I could. It even bent the aluminum pushrod (If I remember correctly it has a steel pushrod for exhaust, aluminum for intake) I was in a hurry, not sure what all else it may have done, so I just rolled the pushrod back out, have way indicated it after straightening it out, and after that I have used a good quality HD 30 oil with never any more problems, and I have inspected it after this. Long winded here, I will finish this up on this last note, I have a surplus to me Titanium 6AL-4v that I plan to make some intake pushrods out of on my next tear down, head cleaning, those should be high end stuff for a DYT 4000 !!! Even with the B&S 24 horsey.
