How to Replace the Pull-Start on Your Honda GX Engine

Welcome back to RuggedMade, I'm Jared, and I'm Nick. In today's video, we're going to talk about replacing the pull starter on these types of Honda engines and clones of these Honda engines. It can be really annoying when you're in the middle of a project, and your pull starter goes down, especially when you don't have another way of starting the engine like electric start. A lot of the times when the pull starter breaks, it's just a rope or a paw. Yeah, you know, that can be a cheap repair but can be a little finicky to do that rope replacement or fix the mechanism back here. And nowadays, these whole assemblies are available so cheaply online that it can be just as cheap to do that as opposed to buying the rope. And as you'll see in a minute when we show you how to do it, replacing these is really easy, and it could be faster than fixing that rope.

So today, we've got a whole bunch of examples here of the kinds of machines that you might have in your garage. All these engines are Honda GX series or clones of the GX series. So that being their commercial line. We'll show you a little bit later about the interchangeability of the different pull starts on these and the different size classes. But I think this is pretty representative of what you're going to find, anything from one of our plate compactors or our log splitters to a leaf blower, generator … they're all pretty much the same thing.

Let's get into how we actually do this replacement. When removing a pull start cover, make sure the ignition is off and remove the three bolts that hold it on, usually 8 to 10 mm. So make sure you don't lose those bolts. Those are unobtanium. One technique that we like to use here in our shop is we put them right back in the holes until we need them.

So we just got this pull-start assembly off the engine. But before you run out and buy a replacement, take a moment and see if you can figure out maybe what went wrong with it. Nick, what are some things that they should check? Obviously, if the cord's good or not, like on this example, it's been hit by something, so it's dented. So the pull-start mechanism is just completely locked up. There's nothing wrong with the motor. Sometimes it's a dented shroud, and the pull-start assembly is just not connecting correctly to the bell. Yeah, so this shroud sits over the flywheel and the fan, and then the pull-start assembly that we just took off sits on that. So you might have a pull starter that's fine, but this got mangled. You know, backed into it or dropped a log on it. In which case, you might just need to replace this part, and these are also pretty readily available. Although, we found that it's kind of hard to get these by themselves. They often come with a pull starter on them and also for very cheap money.

There's also this mechanism in here [that] could have a few issues, right? Yeah. The spring can break, or the paws can be just worn out or broken. So we're talking about these little paw arms that stick out and engage with the shroud here. Again, if that's bad or worn out or damaged, the whole point of today's video is talking about how easily and cheaply you can replace this whole thing. So we're not going to talk about how you might be able to repair that. Some of these parts, like the baskets, are available, but it's more trouble than it's worth, usually.

Make sure the engine's not locked up, and there's nothing stuck in the flywheel. I've seen rocks, debris, and keys in there. You never know what could fall in there. It is magnetic. So Nick just covered a couple of possible issues where debris or bolts can get down into this flywheel and cooling fan area, and that could lock up your engine and make you think you've got a bad pull starter. But there are just a couple of other possibilities. You could actually have a problem inside your engine. You could have bad rings, some problem inside the cylinder. Another thing is it could be hydrolocked. You might have some raw fuel in the combustion chamber. That's a pretty easy thing to check if your pull starter seems locked up. Just pull the spark plug, pull it over, and if it freezes up, and you get a geyser of fuel spurting out, that was your problem. But there is one other issue that we see pretty often because we sell a lot of log splitters that have these valves. Nick, why don't you show this common but fortunately very easy little problem to fix that happens. We unfortunately see it a lot. The detent valve will be stuck engaged, and the engine locks up. So when that detent's in that position, it closes the whole system, and you're trying to pull it over, and you think your engine seized up. It's just the valve. You pop that back into neutral, and you'll be good to go.

And we do have, we covered this in a previous video where we talked about the electric start systems on engines. So today we're mainly talking about these Honda GX series engines and the clones of them, of which there are many. You might be familiar with the Predator from Harbor Freight. We use the Raven on our splitters. There's Champion, Zongshan, there's a whole bunch of these other brands. There are a few engines that definitely are not in this family of interchangeable parts. We've got one over here that Nick can show us. This is a Honda GC-190. This is their residential series, and the pull start cover is completely different than most Hondas. And then there are also some engines, other brands, that are not interchangeable. Briggs, Kohler, parts like this pull starter, fuel tanks, and those kinds of things are not interchangeable across those different big-name brands.

So within these Honda GX engine parts and the clones of the GX series, what have you found as far as interchangeability? It's like 99.9% of the stuff is interchangeable, especially the shrouds, pull starts, a lot of other stuff. Sometimes the tanks and exhaust can be a different style, but they'll still bolt right on. Yeah. Now, there's nothing wrong with buying the OEM Honda parts, whether you have an actual Honda or a clone of a Honda. But for most of the parts that either can be damaged or wear out, we just had great luck with the clone parts, the off-brand parts. They're just about the same as the OEM parts.

With these Honda GX series engines and the clones, you have to figure out what size engine you have to order the right pull starter. So these GX series engines are broken up into roughly three size classes. Here we've got the GX 390. That's their biggest single-cylinder engine, and its counterpart here, it's a Raven 420, even though it's got a little more displacement, a lot of the parts are going to be the same like this pull starter. The Honda series also includes the GX 340. I think that's, you know, once upon a time that was rated at around an 11 horsepower engine. They don't really do that anymore, but most of us still are familiar with 13 horse[power] and 11 horse[power]. Anything bigger than that, Honda jumps into the V-twins, and you're not going to really have any parts commonality between those families.

The next step down from these sort of 13-horsepower-ish engines would be the GX 270, the GX 240. Those are, you know, traditionally their 8 and 9-horsepower engines. And here we've got a Raven 301, which is about a 9 to 10 horsepower engine. So those are going to have the same pull starter.

And then you go down to the smaller engines, where you're talking, you know, the GX 200 would be the most common engine in that size class. And here we've got a few examples like the Raven 212. We've got a Lifan 196cc engine on a compactor. And then we've got kind of a nameless engine on a pressure washer. We didn't have any GX 160s around to test whether the parts are interchangeable. I believe the GX 160 pull starter would be the same as the GX 200 pull starter.

Well, it turns out that we actually did have some GX 160s lying around. Had a couple of carts here, and we did some double-checking. And sure enough, the GX 160 is part of that smaller Honda GX class as far as the size. So GX, in fact, it goes as low as GX 120s, 160s, 200s. Those pull starts are all interchangeable. Again, when you're shopping for these online, they're usually going to tell you which Honda engine sizes those parts fit. And that's going to correlate basically if you get the displacement right, you're going to end up with the right part.

So we're going to reinstall this pull starter on this Honda GX 390. Just make sure the orientation is correct. Yeah, this is the original part. So it's got the sticker on there. So it'd be pretty hard to screw it up. But when you get the replacement parts, they usually don't have a sticker. And plenty of times I've reinstalled them the wrong way on some machines. It doesn't really matter which way the pull starter is oriented. But our log splitter here is a really good example where you want to make sure it's pulling away from the machine. If you installed this the wrong way, it'd have you pulling right into the beam, which isn't going to work. You're just going to have to take it off and put it back on. You're not going to break anything. When you're installing these bolts, just make sure you don't over-tighten them and just check for free play. Make sure the engine turns over.

So just for fun, we thought we'd show just how interchangeable these parts are between the Honda GXs and the various clones out there. We've got our Raven part. This is off of that Duromax generator. It's rated as a 16 horse[power]. So I'm not sure what the displacement is, but it still fits in with this GX 390 class of engine. So let's do a little quick swap. No, this isn't a Milwaukee versus DeWalt video, but that has the 10-mil bolts. This has the 8-mil heads. So this is faster. So we'll see if this Raven part fits on the Honda. All right, so Nick won that round for speed. But here we've got that one pulling over smoothly. The Duramax pulls over smoothly. So like I said, this is just for fun, but it really does show that you can order these parts so cheaply off the internet. And we've generally found they fit with no problems, and the quality is just fine. So why pay that full OEM price for these spare parts?

So that about wraps up everything you need to know about pull starters, replacing them, and the interchangeability of them. So hopefully after this video, you can get your engine running.

Thanks for watching. Let us know in the comments if there are any other tech video topics you'd like us to cover, and specifically let us know if you do want a video on replacing just the rope. Sometimes if you've got some of that rope in your garage, you're talking about a 5-cent fix. We'd be happy to do that video. So thanks for watching. See you next time.