Matching engines with equipment: To foster Commercial Power division's growth, Briggs & Stratton expands Engine Application Center - small engine technology

Diesel Progress North American Edition, Sept, 2003 by Mike Brezonick

For any engine manufacturer, developing an engine is only half the battle. The other--and just as important--half-concerns making sure that the engine will work effectively in the market segments at which it is targeted. As part of its efforts to increase its presence in the commercial industrial engine markets, Briggs & Stratton has expanded its Engine Application Center (EAC) at its headquarters in Milwaukee, Wis. and has put a particular emphasis on test capabilities for larger engines and equipment, including vehicles.

"No one buys engines to run on dynamometers" said Ed Kolinske, manager of Application Engineering who oversees their activities at the EAC. "They buy them to power equipment."

"Our job here is to make sure that the engines we develop are well suited to the equipment that our customers build. To do that, we must be able to match our engine to their equipment, test it and demonstrate to them that our engine is a good fit for their product and provides added value."

While the EAC was initially established in the 1970s, Briggs & Stratton has made significant investments to the facilities recently in order to accommodate the company's burgeoning Commercial Power business unit and its larger engine range. The Commercial Power lineup covers a wide variety of engines ranging from 2.4 to 34 hp. They include: air-cooled, single-cylinder gasoline engines; air-cooled V-twins to 31 hp; a 27 hp liquid-cooled V-twin and three-cylinder gasoline, diesel and gaseous-fueled engines developed as part of a joint venture with Japan's Daihatsu, a member of the Toyota group.

"Over the last two years, we have expanded this facility and that is directly related to the Commercial Power business" Kolinske said. "Last year an expansion of this facility and the acquisition of another lab in the adjacent building increased our work space to approximately 30,000 sq.ft.

"We really did need more room because the engines we are working with keep getting bigger as our product line grows. When we started, the largest engines we had to work with were probably about 20 hp. Now they go up to almost 35 hp and the equipment has gotten larger and more complicated as well. As a result, we had to upgrade our facilities and our people had to upgrade their capabilities as well to keep up."

The EAC has a staff of 24 with nine engineers, nine technicians and three model makers, along with support personnel. "All of our engineers and technicians have to really know our entire product line," noted Kolinske. "We don't have anyone specializing in just one or two products--they've got to be able to work on all of them."

The site incorporates a range of different test cells able to test and document engines in a range of conditions. There are eight hot test cells which can be used to test engines in ambient conditions up to 120[degrees]F. Conversely, a cold room can be used to test engine operating and cold-starting down to -25[degrees]F.

There are both engine and chassis dynamometers that are used to test larger engines and equipment.

"The test cells we had in this building were just getting too small for the kinds of products we had to test," Kolinske said. "The new test cells can handle the larger two- and three-cylinder liquid-cooled engines and the equipment we're seeing, such as utility, vehicles."

Commercial Power engineering also can take advantage of the existing EAC facilities, which include a very large anechoic chamber for acoustic testing, along with a reliability lab that has 100 engine dynamometers rigged for endurance testing. Other capabilities include vibration testing, fuel system testing and emission testing. "All of those resources are available to us, too," Kolinske said.

At any given time, the EAC is filled with a variety of equipment. Some are prototypes of new machines, while others are production units where a repower is being considered.

"We try to work closely with the OEMs and in many cases, we are aware of their product plans and what they have coming down the road," Kolinske said. "That allows us to talk to them about what engines we have that really match what they're looking for. Ideally, we get involved when the machine is in the design phase. If we can get a working prototype in here to make the initial installation, it will make things move more quick]y in getting a new product to market."

But just as often, the challenge is to engineer a Commercial Power engine into a machine that uses a competitor's engine. That kind of operation can be daunting, as it often requires the fabrication of new parts or altering existing brackets or mounting hardware, which can be accomplished in a machine shop within the EAC. "With every product that we retrofit with a Commercial Power engine, we provide the running sample back to the OEM for evaluation," Kolinske said. "Along with the running unit, we also provide a report listing the changes made and samples of special parts which were fabricated.

"We recently completed a repower project that was more complex than anticipated. Our job was to install a larger three-cylinder liquid-cooled engine where space was a major challenge. Per instructions from the customer, we knew what we could change and what we couldn't. We then provided the OEM with a product suitable for his field testing and evaluation of our engine."