Honda GC vs GS engines?

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Avery4

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Jan 29, 2014
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Just curious what the differences between Honda's GC and GS series engines are. I know that the GC series engines are designed for light duty homeowner use (and are absolute junk IMO) and the GS series engines are designed for light duty commercial use and presumably have some design differences to make them more durable, although I have no experience with those engines and no idea what those differences are. What exactly are the differences between these engines? Honda's website doesn't list any differences that I can see and there is pretty much no information about this online that I can find. Thanks
 
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Originally Posted by sloinker
GX is the commercial level I believe.

Yes, those are very nice engines. The GS is supposed to be in the middle- higher end than the GC but lower end than the GX. The GS is clearly way more similar to the consumer grade GC than the heavy duty GX though.
 
The GS has a cast iron cylinder sleeve where the GC is all aluminum, so the GS will typically maintain compression over a loner service life. They both have the plastic (resin) cam, whereas the GX models have a steel cam.
 
Originally Posted by ripcord
The GS has a cast iron cylinder sleeve where the GC is all aluminum, so the GS will typically maintain compression over a loner service life. They both have the plastic (resin) cam, whereas the GX models have a steel cam.

Oh I see, I thought they both had iron cylinder sleeves. Those plastic cams are absolute crap and are one of the many reasons I dislike the GC engines so much. My neighbor's mower with a GCV160 engine ground the cam up after only a year of use. It's disappointing that Honda put their name on such a piece of crap with an aluminium cylinder and plastic cam
 
My lawnmower is going on 15 years old with whatever light duty engine Honda produced back then. Still going strong. I'm actually hoping it will die soon so I can replace it with a battery powered mower. It has not complied.
 
Originally Posted by Avery4
Originally Posted by sloinker
GX is the commercial level I believe.

Yes, those are very nice engines. The GS is supposed to be in the middle- higher end than the GC but lower end than the GX. The GS is clearly way more similar to the consumer grade GC than the heavy duty GX though.


My GX has been running strong since 1987.
 
Originally Posted by Avery4
Oh I see, I thought they both had iron cylinder sleeves. Those plastic cams are absolute crap and are one of the many reasons I dislike the GC engines so much. My neighbor's mower with a GCV160 engine ground the cam up after only a year of use. It's disappointing that Honda put their name on such a piece of crap with an aluminium cylinder and plastic cam
I think your neighbor failed to put oil in the engine and is looking for someone else to blame. There are millions upon millions of those Honda GCV160 motors out there running long lives. Per my earlier, I own two of them. Both work hard and show no signs of slowing down.

Internet reviews and forums are a funny thing. The people with a bad experience are 10x more likely to post a review than those who received a product that met their expectations.
 
Originally Posted by Astro_Guy
Originally Posted by Avery4
Oh I see, I thought they both had iron cylinder sleeves. Those plastic cams are absolute crap and are one of the many reasons I dislike the GC engines so much. My neighbor's mower with a GCV160 engine ground the cam up after only a year of use. It's disappointing that Honda put their name on such a piece of crap with an aluminium cylinder and plastic cam
I think your neighbor failed to put oil in the engine and is looking for someone else to blame. There are millions upon millions of those Honda GCV160 motors out there running long lives. Per my earlier, I own two of them. Both work hard and show no signs of slowing down.

Internet reviews and forums are a funny thing. The people with a bad experience are 10x more likely to post a review than those who received a product that met their expectations.

He did not fail to fill the oil, I was there when he started it for the first time and he takes very good care of his equipment. The engine didn't lock up, the plastic cam got ground up. This seems to be a common problem with these engines https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3779118/1
 
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Originally Posted by Propflux01
Briggs has been using plastic cams for years now.

That's true, my 500E powered mower has one. However, I have not seen a problem with them and from what I have read they are not nearly as problematic as Honda's camshafts. If they were selling them for less than the Chinese GX clones I could understand, but why would I pay more for one of those engines when I could get something much better for half the cost? I have seen a lot of odd problems with Honda's GC engines that I have not seen with other engines, the camshaft is far from the only reason I dislike them.
 
I have Honda GCV160 engines on both my lawn mower and pressure washer. The mower engine went into service in 2006 and the pressure washer engine in 2014. Both engines have run flawlessly with normal maintenance. I change the oil in the mower twice yearly usually using synthetic oil and once yearly on the pressure washer. I believe that people having trouble with a particular brand of engine most likely caused the early engine failures due to lack of proper maintenance and then blame the failure on inferior parts.
 
I believe it's a GC190 on my log splitter. No complaints whatsoever but it certainly isn't an industrial application either.

Dads pressure washer has a 13 horse GX. I can certainly see how it'd be considered commercial. I rented a trencher last summer that had the same family of engine. It seemed tough given its poor life.
 
Originally Posted by LotI
Sample size of one does not make a bad engine. Because, statistics.

I agree. I do not dislike the GC engines because of that one engine that the camshaft failed in, any company can make a defective product. There's a lot more to it than that. I have seen several of these engines with issues. The aluminium cylinder, timing belt problems that are not easily repairable, oil leaking from the governor shaft because they were too cheap to put a seal around it, oil leaking from around the camshaft because of the unnecessary point of failure, valve problems that require a complete teardown to repair due to the non removable cylinder head, etc are the reasons I dislike these engines. Perhaps they are not terrible, but there are much better engines available for much less money.
 
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I have a large lawn biz and have run the gc series hard and never had one fail in the camshaft area. cant say the same for briggs. have had several gx and while smooth and ultra reliable are gutless in the power/tourque . I prefer the gc over all other entry level engines.
 
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