Illusion and Dortmund are two Kordes roses that are relatively resistant here. Some years less then 20-30% defoliation on the first one and 50% on the second one. In other years it could be more disease. Both are red climbers w/o scent. Both can get cercospora in the fall. If there is a need for healthy red climber,I would prefer Quadra that is more healthy for me. I also tried Floral Fairy Tale and Laguna last year. It is not fair to judge base on one year, but so far they FFT was not bad at all, ver limited disease. Laguna got a lot of cercospora and some BS. In the past I tried many of the older Kordes roses like Iceberg, Sunsprite, Lavender Lassie, Westerland, etc. Westerland was a little better then others, but still..None of them was healthy for me. You probably will have a better luck with some of these roses, I think Harry from PA grows Westerland successfully. Olga

*SIGH*... Y'know mownie, I really do think that the hard-to-turn-the-engine-over syndrome is related to the starter. Now I can't get it to turn the engine more than a single revolution at all even when it is cold (I have it uncovered so I can see what it is doing when cranking it), let alone turn it over to fire. This is what it was doing when it was hot. So can't try out the carb adjustments yet since I can't get it to turn the flywheel fast enough to fire the engine at all. What HAS been happening is when you turn the ignition key, the starter driveshaft pops up, the gear engages the flywheel, then it stops wmmph at a high compression point in the engine or something, and then labors and can't turn it past that point, like something is jamming up somewhere. At least once tonight though it cranked the engine a couple revolutions without incident but it wasn't seeming to get any firing action; that was right after I put the battery on the charger briefly. THEN, after that a couple times the starter drive shaft (or whatever it is) did not pop up at all upon turning the key; it sat there and spinned....so we know it is getting current. Tried a little WD-40 to the shaft under the silver disk-shaped part below the gear but did not make much difference...a and finally another time the shaft popped up, engaged, stopped (when it stops it is engaged with the flywheel and stays there after releasing the key; you have to turn the shaft to make it come back down), and then there were a couple of clicking noises coming from inside the starter too when the key was held in start briefly past the jam-up point. That also happened on one or two tries. Sooooo....Battery? Starter? Neither? Both? lol. I replaced a broken plastic part at the top of the drive shaft on the starter season before last; will have to look up what it is called but remember removing and replacing the pin that holds it all together to the drive shaft was next to impossible...so kind of hesitant to try to tear it all down again because it was such a pain. Way easier to just buy a new one, albeit a lot pricier.. Might make more sense just to put the battery on the charger to be sure it does have sufficient charge before blowing $125 on a new starter but will it hurt the battery if it DOESN'T need charging to do this? Can't afford the starter at this point anyway. Sorry to change this thread so late in the game, if you think I need to start another let me know. Dang dinosaur...it just doesn't want to do any work, that's all... :^\

@walt2002, hey i was wondering if you were still here, i have read many of your replies and was hoping to hear from you and mownie, you 2 seem to have a wealth of knowledge on these things, i will try the carb first, because it is the easier than the head, but how would the carb cause fire to pop in the carb? im no genius but it seems compression is coming through the carb, and with the few parts in the carb, even no diaphragm, i cant under stand how it would be bad, do they have a ball and spring behind a welch plug like the old model walbro carbs?, i remember years ago when i worked on them a rule of thumb was if you shook them and heard no rattle they were no good, it had something to do with a barometric pressure adjuster valve, you didnt have to adjust the carb in higher locations as you did a b&s carb, just wondering, because i cleaned the carb twice, i put it in a bowl of water while disassembled and used a small straw to blow air through every hole, got bubbles on all, but i will swap them anyway and see, i just want to know what it is, thanks for your advice man

silly you, my dear sir, you are completely wrong. Web search and come back to this thread with more arms. Brass is as you wrote, an alloy mostly of those two metals, and it also (can, may, often does) contain lead too. A small amount of lead. This (even if very small) amount of lead leaches out first. That's what I know or think I know based on reading and learning. When I wrote that "Brass leaches out lead, no matter how little lead is in the brass" I made a real point. It appears that your uninformed comment about zinc being dangerous is just an attempt at denigration and sarcasm. Zinc is not leaching out of brass. Now I'm all for sharing what you know, and vice versa, but I hope you have something significant and factual to add too if you want to jab and barb. Just f.y.i. for the general reader: alloys often contain lots of ingredients other than their two main ingredients. For example, there are many recipes for stainless steel (different types), and these variations have numbers attached to them. Brass never needed to be codified as much as stainless did so it never got that numbering work applied to it. Hth