re: the bearings were dry......
heck, I'd love to know how B&S ,Honda, etc. test their small engines with NO oil in them before they ship !
That I can tell you. Well, at least how they did it 40 plus years ago. The engine is filled with oil, started, checked for leaks and odd noises, and then the engine is tilted , the drain plug is removed along with the fill plug. A hose with low air pressure is put in the fill hole and the oil is literally blown out of the engine. Well, 99% of it. The same oil is used again and again. When it is disposed I don't know, but since the engines only run for a few minutes, I'd say probably monthly.
I was curious about how small engines were test run, so I called B&S and asked them. The question I forgot to ask was how do the feed the engines fuel? If they use the tank on the engine, then they have a way of removing the residual fuel and squirting some type of oily preservative in the tank.
What brought my call to B&S about was my grandfather bought a new riding mower from a big box store. I brought it home, put oil and gas in the engine and when I pulled the recoil start cord the engine just spun like the spark plug was out. I removed the plug, checked for spark, and screwed in a compression gauge. The needle barely moved. I knew the engine had compression release, but even that gives you some resistance in the way of compression.
Long story short, someone at B&S was having a bad day and put the rings on the piston with all of the gaps at 12 o'clock. The compression pressure just leaked into the crankcase. I took the engine apart, turned the rings to space the gaps apart and put it back together. It started second pull and ran great for many years. My original question to B&S was how it got past their QA?