Picked up a Kohler K532

cjet69

Tractorologist
Senior Member
Member
Just got this K532 from a local mower shop. It came out of a John Deere 400 that got a new Vanguard installed. This was just rebuilt and the customer complained that it would send out a bunch of smoke when he was going down a hill. After several attempts at finding the problem they gave up on it and repowered the tractor. We'll see if we can find anything.

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That I don't know. All that the PO said was heavy oil smoke, but the mower shop says they could never get it to do it when they had it. I need to get it setup to run and then maybe tilt it a little and see if I can get it to smoke.

My dad, who is a former auto mechanic and automotive instructor, bored and honed this engine for the mower shop. I just looked at some old pics and the date on them is 11/15/2015 so it been several years since it was rebuilt.
 
Likely just a broken reed on the block breather allowing oil to shoot into the intake. Going by the huge amount of crud on the top side of the engine, I highly doubt the dealer even looked into the issue. No way they could attempt anything with such a dirty engine. That amount of crud took a long time to build up.
 
Likely just a broken reed on the block breather allowing oil to shoot into the intake. Going by the huge amount of crud on the top side of the engine, I highly doubt the dealer even looked into the issue. No way they could attempt anything with such a dirty engine. That amount of crud took a long time to build up.

Thanks, olcowhand. I'll take a look at it.
 
I don't know the 532's breather area but if any drain holes in it are blocked it will cause the oil to pool then sucked into the intake. Since oil level is good, then almost has to be the reed/breather assembly I'd think. Now if his downhills were incredibly steep then it could maybe flood the breather without anything being wrong. I had a vertical Kohler that would smoke like a James Bond car on steep left hand slopes and nothing at all was wrong with the engine. That slope I had to mow one direction only and go back down the farm drive for the next cut back.
 
This will definitely be a learning experience for me. I haven't been into one of these engines before. It would be nice if I can find a problem and preferably an easy one. I don't know just how steep the hills are that he was operating on, but did here he runs it in really dirty, dusty conditions. That may be why the engine is so dirty.

I think the first thing I want to do is figure out what I need too wire up the run it.
 
About 3 weeks ago I had to change the fuel pump on my M20 which is a close cousin of the 532 its got 1344 hrs on it and must never have had the cooling fins / engine cleaned it was so covered kind of like yours I was surprised the over heat light wasn't coming on. Got it cleaned up and the fuel pump replaced and it starts and runs good
 
I went looking for the breather on this engine. I expected to find a reed type bolted into the block, but found this has a "non-serviceable" breather housing with what looks like a rubber seal pressed in valve bolted onto the top of the governor housing. It looked pretty oily around the gasket area when I pulled it off so there was definitely some oil where it could get sucked into the intake. From what I can tell the valve seems to be working so now I need to look at the governor to see how much oil is fed into the housing thru a pressure line. Don't know if its not draining fast enough allow oil to build up to the point of being sucked into the breather. Just more ?'s at this point.

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