My wife and had had our Wheel Horse since about 1987. We have used it ever since for mowing the lawn and love it. We have since added a rear finish mower on our tractor so the Wheel Horse is now more of a "trimmer" and used for towing the roller and spreader as needed.
We bought it used and it had an 8HP Briggs engine in it. It is the right color but honestly I don't know if it is original - thought they typically had Kohlers in them. But the price was right and we had our first house so needed a mower.
But the engine is starting to get a bit tired so I'm considering options. Rebuild engine, replace engine, upgrade engine...
I would ideally like to put the Kohler in it but don't think I'm going to find one of those around any more that is a reasonable price and in good shape. (I like to keep things original as much as I can and the switch to Kohler is probably moving more toward original.)
I came across this forum and was surprised to see that these are restored, collected and have such a strong following. So I thought I would toss the question out there to see what advice I can get.
I've added a picture of the mower. Sorry but I didn't take the time to pull it out and wash it up pretty like so many of the mowers on this forum. There are some real nice ones!