My K301A uses oil
 

As you may well already know I replaced my K161 with a K301A 12 hp Kohler engine.
Well the engine does not smoke on start up or full throttle but it does consume oil after mowing approximately 3 acres of grass I have to add oil as dip stick read 1/4 full after I finished mowing. Any thoughts on this? I am currently using Rotella 30 weight oil, what type & grade oil do you use in your Cub? And does your engine use any oil please specify engine type Thanks!

Rebuild it

If you're losing that much oil, you may have bad crankshaft seals. You definitely need to pull that motor and find where all that oil is going.

These old engines are tired after many years. If there's no external leaks, Pull the spark plug and take a look at it, you'll probably see evidence of oil getting burnt. A combination of the cylinder in them getting out of round and worn rings is most likely the culprit. Unfortunately it's time to rebuild.

The crankcase only holds 1.5 qts IIRC. you can't be burning a quart of oil. The motor would lock up if it was that low. If the dipstick reads 1/4 full, then you would add 3/4 of a pint to bring it up to full.

I'll tell you the same thing I told you to do with your 161. Either pay someone to overhaul it, or you overhaul it. I'm not surprised at all that this motor burns oil. All the K series engines are old and tired.

I farmed out a Kohler K241 from my model 100 5 years ago to be rebuild. The engine is in my model 72 and it runs awesome, with power! Once I get my collection of IH Cub Cadets up to par, I'm going to learn the skill of rebuilding myself!

The first step to rebuilding your own engines is to get some of the specialty tools needed. You will need a torque wrench that goes down to 10ft/lbs, I know Snap On has one and I'm sure other brands do to. You will also need a good set of feeler gauges, a valve spring compressor would also be handy but not necessary since the machine shop can remove and install the new valves. Other than that you just need basic hand tools. There's really not much to these engines and the manual will tell you everything you need to know so read it and then read it again and then again and have it sitting next to you to reference while building the engine.

Ideally you need a torque wrench that reads in inch pounds.

Don't forget a good puller helps too to remove the flywheel and bearing plate. Some come off easy, others not so much

Good point, I didn't think of that while I was running the process through my head. Point I was trying to make was to start buying tools now that way he has them when the time comes, rebuilding an engine and having to buy all the specialty tools at the same time could get costly but slowly buying the tools over time will lesson the wallet hurt.