Wisconsin engines

One of the reasons that I prefer vintage Bolens tractors over some of the other brands is there use of Wisconsin engines,they used engines from just about every small engine company but they had quite a few of there earlier models that used Wisconsins.Now if you ask people that have been around engines for a while about Wisconsin engines,you'll get a lot of different opinions,everything from love 'em to hate 'em.Wisconsin has been building engines since around 1909 or 1910,they started out building 4 cylinder engines that were used in cars,trucks and tractors.Stutz,Kissel,McFarlan,Brockway and FWD were a few of the companies that used Wisconsin engines.The Stutz/Wisconsin combination cars were front runners in the early years at the Indianapolis 500 and the early Stutz Bearcats used Wisconsin engines starting in 1914.In the 1930s they started building small engines and came out with the V type 4 cylinder that is still used on a lot of agricultural and industrial applications.The engines that they built from the 1930s into the 1970s were big hunks of iron,most weighed 100lbs or more,one of those sitting on a tractor frame does a pretty good job keeping the front wheels on the ground.Bolens was one of only a few companies that used Wisconsin engines and if you find one today,unless it's been sitting outside unprotected,it probably doesn't have much wear in it.I've heard of a few that sounded like they were used hard enough to show wear,were rebuilt and are ready for another 40 or 50 years.

vintage garden tractors

There are still a lot of good,usable garden tractors from the 1960s around yet,if you have the knowledge to fix them yourself a lot of them were parked because of simple things that went wrong with them and people just wanted something new.The Bolens tractors from the 1960s were actually pretty easy and relatively cheap to keep running if you understand points and condensor ignitions.I've found very few that had bad magnetos,most times the only thing wrong with them is that the points are dirty or corroded or there is oil in the box where the points are that won't let the points get a good ground.Anytime that I clean points on an older engine,I take them out and file them to get a new surface on them,then before you put them back in the engine,use some contact cleaner to clean the inside of the box out good to be sure there's no oil residue.Put the points and condensor back in and set the points to specs but before you put the cover back on,take a dollar bill and run it through the points to clean the surface again,the material that the bill is made of works better than anything to clean the points.If by chance you do find a magneto ignition on a Wisconsin engine with a bad magneto,it's very easy to switch them over to a battery ignition using a coil and different ignition switch so even if you have a bad ignition,all is not lost.