K321- factory or factory replacement?
 

Well I've been slowly chipping away at my 147's K321, and upon first bringing the tractor home I had assumed the engine was painted black in order to match with the rest of the tractor, which was painted red. I even found bits of yellow paint on the gas tank.

However since diving into the engine I have discovered no other evidence of yellow paint (when the tractor was painted they did NOT strip the old paint off) and I discovered that it has the later aluminum oil pan instead of cast iron. I would have to check and see what the S/N is on the engine because I don't remember off the top of my head. Is this the factory engine or is it a replacement?

And with the aluminum oil pan, it appears to be in good shape still, no rounded out threads or anything, but I do have a K301 laying around that came with my parts tractor that should have a cast iron oil pan. Should I go through the trouble of swapping the aluminum for cast iron, or does it not matter with a Narrow Frame since the engine is solid mounted?

Perhaps these had ought to help a bit, I got the spec and serial numbers off the engine:

Spec #: 60226d

S/N: 9508226 (was hard to read but I'm 99% certain that's the number)

The engine has the newer style sticker type spec and serial tags, as well as the 'Kohler Cast iron line' decal near the top of the shroud. Perhaps the spec number determines what this engine was? I'm no expert on decoding the spec number but perhaps someone else here is...

Sounds like a replacement engine to me. I wouldn't worry about the aluminum pan on a solid mounted engine, the aluminum pans are really only an issue on the rubber mounted tractors.

The "60226" Kohler Spec was built for IH/Cub Cadet. BTW, Kohler offered 7 different Oil Pans for the K321. For the 60226, the 47-199- 09-S was the correct one, which is NLA.


:IH Trusted Hand:

I agree
.
IT is a later model replacement unit.
Also it has the hardened ACR tab that will likely break if adjustment is attempted. (see K series manual dated 4/90 section 9.2)

That ser # is newer than the OEM engine in my dual stick 1450 which is below the cut off for hardened ACR tabs.

BTW, I just finished tuning this unit up and did the adjustment, it starts much easier now as it only had about .010 rise on the ACR which is supposed to be .031-.042

Thanks guys! Sounds like I don't have to worry about the oil pan, just the thing I was hoping to hear. Didn't really want to go through the trouble of pulling apart another engine anyway.

As for ACR, the system still operates normally so I'm not too worried about that. I went and read through that section of the manual just for the heck of it too.

I guess it's kinda cool that this tractor actually has a replacement engine, definitely wasn't what I originally expected. But hey, the black paint matches the red tractor a lot better anyway! :biggrin2:

Better yet, it's going back together tonight! :beerchug:

The 147 was produced from Nov '69 to Aug '71. The Engine rolled off Kohler's line in 1979.

The tractor itself dates to 1970, making the engine 9 years newer than the tractor. Very interesting to know.

Thanks Roland! :ThumbsUp:

My 147 also has a replacement engine.

Aluminum oil pan should not be an issue, unless you wish to use a magnetic heater, for starting ease in cold weather. Like we are going to have here for the next week or so, w/minus double digit temps at night.

Fortunately for me the tractor probably won't see much winter use, so I don't think I have much of a need for a block heater anyway.