Kubota gas engine.

[rentthis]

This is an info request for no purpose other than to satisfy my curiosity. I bought a new Biljax man lift. The lift has a Kubota 2 cylinder water cooled. gasoline engine. The sweet little engine looks exactly like a Kubota diesel. My question is, was this engine built in an either/or fashion? If this is possible, I can imagine that engine lasting until the cows come home, die and are reincarnated and come back home again. Are the internal components, crank, bearings etc the same or similar? I hope someone knows so I don't have to disassemble it to find out.

 

[kuboman]

I believe it was built as a gas engine. I think its all aluminum but could be mistaken on that.

Just did some reading and found they are patterned after the super mini series diesels. So they might share some common components such as the block. I doubt there would be much crossover for internal parts.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Any chance you could get some #'s off the block?
On that engine I couldn't even tell you where to look for the numbers at.

 

[BWXT]

I have a single-cylinder Kubota gasoline generator (5kw). It looks very much like a typical small gas engine, but you can tell by the 1-pull start and the sound during operation that it is much more special than a modern POS Briggs. I was curious too if these are built more robustly than a typical small gas engine. Seems like it is.

 

[K.P.]

My lawn tractor is a Kubota G2460. It's WG752 3 cylinder 24 hp gasoline engine is identical to the D722 16 hp Diesel engine in my B7300. I'm sure there are mechanical differences but visually they appear the same. The gas engine is amazingly quiet and powerful.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Looking over all the parts, it does look to share the same block and a lot of the same parts, amazingly the head even looks the same.

GM did the same but oposite back in the 80"s with the Pointiac 350 that they tried to turn into a diesel, that ended horibbly.
Had a friend that had a Junk yard and they had thousands of those engines in a pile.
We took several and turned them into gas motors, and used them in street race motors, they had way too much power, and way too much knock even on Racing fuel, but it was cheap fun!

But a diesel designed engine turned into a gas engine, that should work very well!

 

[lugbolt]

Looking over all the parts, it does look to share the same block and a lot of the same parts, amazingly the head even looks the same.

GM did the same but oposite back in the 80"s with the Pontiac 350 that they tried to turn into a diesel, that ended horibbly.
Had a friend that had a Junk yard and they had thousands of those engines in a pile.
We took several and turned them into gas motors, and used them in street race motors, they had way too much power, and way too much knock even on Racing fuel, but it was cheap fun!

But a diesel designed engine turned into a gas engine, that should work very well!

Those blocks were better blocks than the gasoline 350's were. IIRC, The gas 350's had windowed mains which were junk from a performance standpoint. The diesel blocks did not have the windows and were considerably stronger....and nowadays the hardcore Pontiac engine builders will buy the diesel blocks with certain casting numbers for pretty good money. Was it Oldsmobile that made the engines? I forget. I think it was. The neighbor guy has one and thinks it's worth it's weight in gold. I told him I thought it was worth its weight in recyclable plastic....he was not amused but I asked him the last time it was started. He said 1998...and I think I remember it. The whole neighborhood knew.

That G2460 engine is similar to what was done on the ZG332. Diesel engine basically converted to gas, and they were nicely done. The head was different on the 332 though, and I haven't been into a 2460 engine at all...seems like something would have to be different to get the compression ratio down to under 10:1; as on the diesels the combustion chamber is either a separate part of the head (not where the valves are) or it's in the piston "dome".

If your little twin cylinder is similar to the diesel version, yes, the bottom end will last a long time. The top end (cylinders, pistons, valves, etc) can too if the filters stay clean and it's not overheated. Lets not forget that some unburned diesel fuel droplets do a decent job of lubricating things on the top of the engine; which is one reason diesel engines tend to last longer. Gasoline has very little (if any) lubrication qualities; but the incoming mixture DOES cool the head, valves, and piston crowns more than a diesel fueled engine would.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Was it Oldsmobile that made the engines?

Yes, you are exactly right, I was wrong when I said it was Pontiac.
At the time we were taking Olds 455's and stroking them to make 495's out of them.
With the right cam and supporting parts you could get a solid 500+ HP out of them.
Pushed one of them up to 750 HP with a roots 871 blower.

 

[1970cs]

NIW! Yes, diesels were unfortunately Olds engines that were slammed together as get out asap. By the time the had them correctly running. They killed them off!

Roosa master pumps and the real culprit of most the issues were the head bolts the finally ran larger diameter head bolts that cured the head gaskets issues.

350 and 260 V8's and a 260 V6 versions. I live about 9 miles away from the plant that used to produce those and the quad 4 engine.

Here is another problem with the diesel program. The time and resources devoted to diesels they actually had use other GM engines (now common place) this is from a 1975 88 with a Pontiac engine, notice no stand pipe for the oil fill in the front of the engine!

Oldsmobile was a leader for new things or they could have been GM's guinea pig. The diesel experimental 5 banger was the first to use a serpentine belt, first company to have a dvd player. Here is the list of firsts:https://www.outrightolds.com/index.php/reference/oldsmobile-firsts



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