To the best of my knowledge, no one makes a Honda powered rider now. Honda dropped theirs in north America but they are still available in Europe for some reason. Snapper has RER's with Briggs engines and they are excellent units. Here is a link that might be useful: Snapper rider

I bought a vacuum oil change canister from J.C. Whitney in 2000 for a new car that I couldn't get under without ramps or jacking up. It worked great for that, and now I mainly use it for the lawn mowers. Quick and clean. It's a kettle-shaped steel vessel of about 2 gal. capacity, with a pump cylinder on top and a pour spout/hose cap with a long hose. You stick the hose in the crankcase and work the pump to create a vacuum. For a car it goes right down the dipstick tube. I think I paid about $65 for it but it's a heavy-duty piece of equipment. Check marine supply houses for cheaper ones that really work fine. They have a lot of uses around boats. These are particularly useful when you want to take out only a certain amount of fluid because you can see it in the plastic vessel.

Bill, I am more familiar with the Moss-Magnuson Act then you could imagine and have been involved in legal cases regarding that act. I suggest you READ my post... "While in warranty I never use anything other than OEM filters" Anywhere in that statement that I said that I thought I had to? It is MY choice to ALWAYS use OEM parts except in circumstances where I decide that a third party part is superior to OEM or provides a feature that I decide I want. By using OEM filters I eliminate any warranty delays if warranty is denied. If you'd rather pay a lawyer to litigate denied warranty coverage with a manufacturer and wait till that is adjudicated then that is your choice and I support your right to make it. I've held positions where my job was to evaluate third party parts and you wouldn't believe how often third party parts fail to meet the OEM specifications regardless that the packaging says meets or exceeds manufacturer specifications. Third partiy manufacturers(?) are not privy to the OEM manufacturer's specifications or designs and they may use materials that are inferior or different than the OEM uses. They reverse engineer(?) the part, blister pack it, and put it on the shelf. Patents? We don't need no stinkin' patents... the Chinese are infamous for counterfeiting anything and everything regardless of any legal protection that exists for the original manufacturer. There are lots of people who want to pay less for something and that's fine... unless when you pay less and get less and don't know it and suffer for doing it. When people unilaterally recommend doing or buying something that less knowledgeable people might blindly follow it does everyone a disservice and so does you assuming what anyone on a forum knows or doesn't know. A dollar's worth for a dollar is still the best deal there is. Those who want to pay fifty cents and get a dollar's worth usually end up paying seventy five cents and getting fifty cents worth. Was true when my Dad told me that for the first time in the 50's, it's still true today, and it will always be true. So you save your buck or two on oil filters and I'll pay a couple bucks more for an OEM filter I need once a year and revel in my piece of mind. This post was edited by justalurker on Mon, Sep 9, 13 at 0:18

Sounds like a scored cylinder/piston. To check, remove the muffler and look at the cylinder and piston. Any large scratches means the piston/cylinder head are trash. Buying new repair parts will be more expensive than buying a new blower. The scoring happens from lack of lubrication, no/not enough oil in the mix or the carburetor is set too lean and the engine overheated.