MAKING A BIG MOVE IN SMALL ENGINES · Engine-oriented concerns involved starting, noise and vibration and air filtration and Briggs & Stratton addressed each aspect. In terms of starting,

22 DIESEL PROGRESS NORTH AMERICAN EDITION January 2018

GASOLINE ENGINES

MAKING A BIG MOVEIN SMALL ENGINESBriggs & Stratton launching first of new line of Vanguard single-cylinder commercial engines from 6.5 to 13 hp targeting global applications

BY MIKE BREZONICK

There has been no shortage of significant news coming out of Briggs & Stratton over the last couple of months.

In October, the Milwaukee, Wis.-headquartered com-pany announced that it would shift production of its com-mercial Vanguard V-twin engines from a joint venture plant in Japan to its own facilities in Alabama and Georgia.

At GIE+Expo that same month, the company unveiled a major building block in connectivity, launching InfoHub for Commercial Cutters, a fleet and machine management technology that combines a mower-mounted gateway device with flexible software programmed to provide cut-ting fleet operators with real-time information on a range of parameters, including machine location, usage and status.

Then in December, Briggs & Stratton announced its acquisition of Ground Logic, a manufacturer of premium commercial landscape spreading/spraying equipment.

With all of that going on, it’s almost hard to believe there could be much new to talk about at this month’s World of Concrete 2018 in Las Vegas, Nev. But in fact, the company saved some of its biggest news for last.

Briggs & Stratton Commercial Power is launching a new range of Vanguard single-cylinder engines for global applications. The new engines will ultimately span a range of 6.5 to 13 hp and incorporate a range of features intended to enhance start-ing, reliability and durability.

After nearly three years in development, Briggs & Stratton is launching the first of a new line of single-cylinder horizontal shaft commercial power gasoline engines. The new Vanguard singles span an output range of 6.5 to 13 hp (see related chart) and target a broad range of applications, such as concrete equipment, light construction machinery, outdoor power equipment and rental machines.

“When we looked at the market, we saw that nobody had really done anything significantly new in that space since Subaru came out with their overhead cam engine in 2001,” said Jim Cross, marketing manager for Commercial Engines at Briggs & Stratton. “There have been engines out there that have been tweaked and adjusted and that have worked very well, but really there’s been nothing brand new.

“So we looked at that market space — and this was before the Subaru exit — and we thought while there is an engine out there that maybe satisfies the market needs, what could we do that would maybe exceed those needs? We didn’t want to just build an engine — we wanted to come out with a complete solution that incorporates our

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mantra of delivering productivity through practical innova-tion and service and support across a complete line of commercial engines.

“We knew we could tweak some existing designs, but instead we decided to start from a blank slate.”

That slate was filled in with two rounds of research with equipment dealers, rental houses and machine users covering more than a year. “There were some surprises,” Cross said. “Three of the top 10 things they mentioned had nothing to do with engines, they were support issues — parts availability, warranty and tech support.”

Engine-oriented concerns involved starting, noise and

vibration and air filtration and Briggs & Stratton addressed each aspect. In terms of starting, the new engine incor-porates advancements in the combustion, carburetion and ignition systems designed to provide significantly improved startability.

“This is achieved by going from a starting window where everything has to be just so otherwise it won’t start, to increasing the size of the starting window,” said Paul Leech, engineering director, New Product Development at Briggs & Stratton. “Getting the proper mixing of the air and fuel going into the combustion chamber and getting the gases to flow the way you want them to so that they’re prepared and mixed quickly and presented to the spark plugs so they can ignite, that’s what the combustion is all about.

“And once you get the combustion event — having a burn that’s going to propagate and continue, getting the mixing and combustion right — that is truthfully for us, and for most people, still very much an art, not a science.”

But a lot of science went into it, some of it in the form of a new Briggs-designed deep-well carburetor that pro-vides a pre-metered amount of fuel to aid in starting. It incorporates surface coatings designed to resist corrosion and fuel deposits.

“This is a global engine,” said Candy Zunker, Global Product Management director, Platform Lead, Horizontals. “The feedback we got was that it needs to be easy to start in cold weather. It’s a very critical piece.”

“Some competitors have a special cold-weather pack-age. The difference is our standard engine will work at that range of temperatures. And you don’t pay extra.”

Intake and exhaust valves have been optimized, Leech said, as is the location of the spark plug, all of which also adds to easier starting. The capacitor discharge ignition (CDI) coil is engineered to enhance startability through variable spark timing.

“A typical ignition coil on engines like this are fixed at one ignition timing,” Leech said. “This is a fairly sophisticated

All of the new Vanguard single-cylinder engines are equipped with a cyclonic air cleaner that incorporates a two-layer filter media. The top layer incorporates nano fiber media with Autoshed technology that uses engine harmonics to shake caked dust off the filter sur-face and send it back into the airstream where it is ejected out the duckbill valve. Combined with the inner cellulose media, it offers change intervals that are three times longer than conventional filters, the company said.

Vanguard Single-Cylinder Gasoline Engine Specs

Engine Displacement Bore x StrokeRating @ 3600 rpm

Availability

Vanguard 160 169 cc 62 x 56 mm 5.0 hp 2020

Vanguard 200 203 cc 68 x 56 mm 6.5 hp 2018

Vanguard 300 300 cc not available 10 hp 2020

Vanguard 400 408 cc 88 x 67 mm 13 hp 2019

All ratings gross hp per SAE J1940


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ignition coil for this type of engine that’s speed sensitive. It understands what the speed is and it can set the timing within a pretty wide range of ignition timing values.”

“It’s a big step forward from what’s typically in the market for an engine in this category. We get great starting events and on the higher end we get good performance and power. We’ve spent a lot of time studying what’s proper timing to get power output. With this ignition coil we can get both instead of making a compromise and putting it in the middle someplace.”

Easy starting is also enhanced by new starter cup and manual recoil system. “Typically there are four points of engagement on a recoil system — this one has six,” Cross said. “What that does is engage earlier and gives you a shorter, smoother pull, which again helps with cold-weather starting.”

Noise and vibration issues were addressed in a variety of ways, with much of the work done at Briggs & Stratton’s new NVH Lab at its Milwaukee headquarters. The site incorporates two hemi-anechoic chambers, a pair of engine dynamometers, two electrodynamic shakers, four hydraulic load-testing stands and a sound quality listening room.

The muffler incorporates improved inlet and outlet tube

shapes, a stepped four-pass flow path and a new fiberglass and retainer section design. As part of the development, Briggs & Stratton was able to adjust the passages within the muffler to achieve the target frequency, tonal quality and backpressure levels.

“This was the first time where we attempted to be predic-tive about the sound in the muffler and about the sound level and quality before we made any components,” Leech said. “That used to be just an art — you have a muffler, you have different kinds of configurations and you test them. There was some intuition in the process. Here we were able to see the physics of what was happening.”

Also reducing radiated noise and vibration, Briggs & Stratton said, is the design of the aluminum cylinder block, less reciprocating mass and better-balanced crankshaft, as well as an optimized fuel tank.

“The fuel tank is a very critical area to tune in on,” Leech said. “Some people don’t pay much attention to it, but it’s like a speaker cone. When that starts to resonate, it really has an impact.”

“The crankshaft balance was really dialed in to reduce vibration and overall, it improves the life and durability of the engine the less it shakes,” said Cross. “The engine’s

Reductions in noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) were a key design target for Briggs & Stratton and much of the development work on the new Vanguard engines took place at the company’s new NVH Lab at its Milwaukee headquarters. The site incorporates a range of testing technologies, including two hemi-anechoic chambers.



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going to shake less, the piece of equipment is going to shake less, to say nothing of the user experience.”

“The NVH Lab and the capabilities they have there really allowed the design team to dial in the noise from scratch and it was also another advantage of starting an engine design from scratch. We didn’t have the compromises we would have had if we’d modified an existing engine platform.”

Briggs & Stratton said the engines’ new cyclonic air filter system also contributes to noise reduction through improved sealing, a tuned expansion chamber and extended inlet tube, all of which improve noise reduction. The filter uses centrifugal force, generated by the airflow through the canister, to eject debris out the duckbill valve before it reaches the filter media.

The media consists of two layers. The outer capacity layer incorporates microspun nano fibers, while the inner efficiency layer is constructed of cellulose backing with more dense fibers. The capacity layer nano fiber media includes Autoshed Technology designed to use engine vibration to keep the filter clean and provide service inter-vals three times those of conventional filters.

“This is two generations past what anybody else is using,” Cross said. “With the Autoshed technology, the nano media is tuned to the vibration signature of this engine. The fine dust that is caked onto the filter is shed, it’s reintroduced to the airstream, where it is ultimately ejected through the duckbill.

“The efficiency layer uses the entire depth of the cellulose media to trap dirt and debris. So what it ends up is it has about 120% more dirt-holding capacity with no degradation in performance. And this is standard on these engines.”

The new engines also incorporate an updated and enhanced version of TransportGuard, Briggs & Stratton’s proprietary technology designed to eliminate the inadver-tent mixing of fuel into the oil during transport by providing engine shutdown and fuel shutoff functions into a single control. First introduced in 2010, the newest version now integrates ignition, throttle and shutdown into a single lever that also now permits remote operation.

“TransportGuard was a must-have,” Cross said. “We took what was already a fantastic system and made it even better.

“One of the limitations on the previous design was that it wouldn’t work on a machine that had remote controls on the handle. Think of a concrete trowel. You couldn’t have TransportGuard before because the controls on a trowel are all remote to the engine. Now it can accommodate remote control and it opens up a whole host of applications we couldn’t address before.”

The TransportGuard control can also be configured to operate to the direction and travel of other widely used engines in the industry, which, along with the engine


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envelope (dimensionally, the company said the new engines are nearly identical to the leading competitive single-cylinder engine, with the same engine mounting and interface), points to Briggs & Stratton’s first fit and repower aims.

“When you think of repower, it’s got to be a drop-in,” Cross said. “You think of an equipment manufacturer, they’re not going to redesign a piece of equipment around our engine.

“So a basic tenet for us was that it’s got to just drop in and fit. So we looked at things like bolt patterns, we looked at crankshaft interface, all the things that would really make it easier for everyone to make a positive decision.”

Briggs & Stratton aimed at simplifying engine service through easy access to the air filter cartridge and creating three oil fill locations, one of them on the rocker cover, and an automotive style dipstick. Oil change intervals have also been extended from the standard 100 hours for the typical engine in this category, to 200 hours, Briggs & Stratton said.

“If you’re doing an oil change and you put it in the rocker cover, you’ve got the whole capacity of the engine to absorb the oil,” Leech said. “If you put it in an oil fill tube or into the small opening at the base of the engine, it can back up, which means more time to fill and poten-tially a mess.”

“People are used to an oil fill in the rocker cover on their cars, so this is something that we think will be familiar.”


A top-down view of one of the new Vanguard single-cylinder engines. The engines are designed to be dimension-ally similar to existing single-cylinder engine platforms to allow for easier installation in OEM equipment and repowers.

The engines will carry Briggs & Stratton’s three-year commercial warranty, backed up by a network of thou-sands of parts and service outlets around the world, as well as the company’s proprietary Power Portal, an online source of a range of technical information search tools, product videos and training resources.

The engines will go into regular production over the next two years, with the Vanguard 200 the first out of the blocks next summer. The Vanguard 400 will follow in 2019 and the remainder of the line will hit the market in 2020.

“We’re starting with the displacements that are most widely used,” Cross said. “We’re going to pre-populate and seed the market with production engines and we’re going to go out and talk to the customers where they’re at and gather their experience, so it won’t be just us talking about it.”

While Briggs & Stratton can cite the new engines as an all-new, clean-sheet, customer-led design backed up by a global support network, Cross said, “we’re not going to just go, ‘Hey, it’s a great engine, you should buy it!’

“We’re going to make direct comparisons to what’s in the market and we’re going to confront and incite that conversation to draw points of comparison. That’s a little different than how we’ve done things in the past, but we’re very confident about these engines.” dp

www.vanguardengines.com


MAKING A BIG MOVE IN SMALL ENGINES · Engine-oriented concerns involved starting, noise and vibration and air filtration and Briggs & Stratton addressed each aspect. In terms of starting,

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