Repower Vanguard 4016 to 23hp Vanguard

I did a little work on the tractor after work today. I discarded the fan retaining ring, tapped the new pilot into the crank, torqued the adapter down, and reinstalled the blower housing.




I mocked up the debris screen over the pump coupler and cut the hole in the screen. With the screen and coupler in place, the screen ends up in the center of the hex on the coupler. My solution to getting the screen over the pump coupler and back into the blower housing was to cut a single slot through one of the screw holes from the outside of the screen to the hole in the middle. I can start one edge of the screen in the blower housing and it sort of screws in place. Note the green paint marker line in the pic.



I mocked up the engine in the frame again to verify alignment and everything appears to be right on the money. Next stop is drilling the new holes in the frame and figuring out what to do with the anti-rotation bracket.

The green wire is for the low oil pressure shut down.
Pics of the back side of the new Vanguard flywheels.

I also think that the liner is a good thing having had to dig out hard crud buildup between the magnets. Folks don't realize how much dust and crud gathers behind the flywheel. I blow out behind the flywheel on my zero turn mower several times a season. Even with good seals on the crankshaft, some oil and moisture collects on parts like a flywheel and an electric clutch as these parts get hot during operation and attract moisture as they cool down causing the crud to cake up and accumulate and in the case of the clutch, moisture gets into the bearings.
I have mixed feelings about some charging systems. Both Briggs and Onan rate most charging systems at 16 amps, but if a Briggs charging system is rated at 16 amps, then a 16 amp rated Onan system is more like a 20 amp system, just my opinion based on my experiences. All small engines with a stator under the flywheel are half phase systems. What this means is that the stator output is alternating polarity current AC. Only half of a full wave of AC is of usable polarity. The half phase of the wrong polarity is blocked by the voltage regulator. This causes the voltage regulator to get hot during operation. The battery sees pulses of regulated direct current DC going to it during operation. The battery has enough internal capacitance to smooth out the DC pulses so the electrical system sees fairly clean and smooth DC.
The bottom line to all this is to periodically charge the battery to keep it up to a good charge level.

This was a productive weekend. My brother was available to handle the fabricating tasks while I worked on getting the engine installed. We took the trailer across town and picked up a clean but poorly running 3014 for my brother and we worked on that in between working on my tractor.

I drilled the new holes in the frame and bolted the engine down while my brother modified the clutch anti-rotation bracket. The pump coupler bolted right on and the debris screen installed just how I hoped it would.





I pulled the hood off and decided that raising the hinge bushings in the frame would be easier than cutting the hinge welds off the hood and adding a spacer there. My brother cut some new bushings for the hinge pin and welded them to some 1"x1" square tube then welded them to the frame. We're going to weld the tubes shut to make it look a little cleaner. In total, the hinge rod got moved up 1-1/4" and the hood clears the air cleaner with some room to spare.




I installed the new muffler and we tried finding a way to run the exhaust out that didn't involve cutting the hood but there just wasn't a good way to do it. My brother built a turbo car and ran the exhaust out the fender of the car with a nice stainless bezel with good results so we opted to go that route. I felt it would be easier and less gaudy than the big gaping hole in the front of the hood like the 4023 has. I cut back the outlet pipe of the muffler inline with the hood, traced the OD of the pipe on the hood with a marker from the inside, and my brother cut the hole and finessed it with a carbide burr. I'm going to make a nice stainless bezel to clean up the hole.





Excuse the booger wiring job in these pics. It was getting late and I was in a hurry to just get it running and as you can see in the last pic with snow all over the tractor, I did get it running. I filled it with oil, primed it, squared away a wiring issue, and started it up. The muffler is actually pretty quiet and it has a nice tone to it. After it warmed up I pulled it outside, thoroughly burnished the clutch, then attacked some old hard pack snow my dad pushed with his quad a week ago. The power difference is huge. The old 16hp would have struggled and lost rpm where the new engine barely got on the governor. I can't wait to run this thing in some fresh, deep snow.

I had a slow day lined up at work so I took a vacation day to wrap up the tractor.

I used the sheetmetal notcher to make some clearance cuts to the original heat shield so it would fit around the front lifting bracket and the air cleaner base. Since I couldn't use the side shields anymore, I cut the rear facing mounting ears off the shield and used them to hold up the heat shield on the upper studs in the hood.



I bent up a heat shield for the clutch out of steel and bolted it up to the 7/16" mounting flange holes in the crankcase.




The last event of the night before trailering it home was wrapping up the wiring. I cut the harness and installed Deutsch connectors so only one connector needs to be unplugged to remove the engine.



Really all that's left now is fabricating a cowl extension to butt up to the blower housing. I'll tackle that project this spring while I'm replacing hydraulic hoses.

I let the engine run for about 20-minutes at half throttle and felt around for air flow through the engine and hood. I was surprised by how much air the deep blower housing and fan moves and glad I didn't just swap the old flywheel and housing on the new engine. You can feel two air streams through the hood grille where the air is blowing out from around the heads and the heat shields over the clutch and in the hood were still cool to the touch. I was a little concerned about the exhaust exit through the hood burning the paint off the hood but the hood was even cool to the touch around the exhaust hole.

Nice work Eddie. Not sure if you found this while researching, Bob and I had a discussion on this about two years ago. I never did get any farther with it mainly due to now having two kids under 3. I was planning to use the front exhaust muffler.
I also went through my collection of Ingersoll pictures from the past few years and found you a few too many pictures of the 21/23HP Vanguard engine and cowl setup.

Matt A said:

Nice work Eddie. Not sure if you found this while researching, Bob and I had a discussion on this about two years ago. I never did get any farther with it mainly due to now having two kids under 3. I was planning to use the front exhaust muffler.

I also went through my collection of Ingersoll pictures from the past few years and found you a few too many pictures of the 21/23HP Vanguard engine and cowl setup.

Click to expand...

Thanks Matt! I know where you're coming from having two kids under 3 myself. I actually did come across your thread while I was researching this swap and it got me started in the right direction and asking all the right questions.

I couldn't find that style muffler anywhere so I ran with the cheaper generic one. As much as I hated cutting the round hole in the side of the hood, cutting that oblong shaped factory style hole in the front of the hood then getting the outlet pipe to align with it looked like a real PITA.

I appreciate the pictures! The cowl extension they used looks like an easy piece to bend up and I think I can duplicate that if I can find a source for that thick foam seal they used.

Eventually I'm going to put together and post a conclusion with a parts list of everything I used and drawings for the crank pilot button and flywheel adapter for you or anyone else that wants to do this swap. With there being shortages of the 16hp and 18hp Vanguards, I have a feeling more people will be turning to the 23hp Vanguard for their repowers in the future.