Honda GX 160 Review

We received a call last week from a friend who was thinking about buying a dozen Honda GX160 motors and wanted to get our opinion.  So naturally we couldn’t wait to get our hands on these motors to see them in action.  Honda makes some of the best small engines and generators around.  These motors are very tough, but at a price.  We found these anywhere from $350 and up, but well worth the price.

These are little engines and when we say little we mean 12″L x 13.4″W x12.5″H.  Don’t let the size fool you because they pack a powerful punch.  These commercial grade engines are air cooled 4 stroke OHV single cylinders.  They produce 4.8HP with 7.6 Lbs ft of torque.  These engines can be used for all sorts of applications such as go karts, chippers, generators, air compressors, pressure washers, concrete cutters and more.  Oh yeah, we were testing this engine for use as a pump.

As you can see by the pictures there is a black pump attached to this motor with an inlet and outlet, which has to be bought separately.  He wanted these motors to move water, so the pump was all ready attached.  Overall this is a very nice motor.  We couldn’t test this over a year’s period, but we will update you on any information we get back from our friend about the motors.  However, we did contact a couple companies who have been using these motors for awhile and time after time we got the same response back and that was they are very reliable.

The motors, as most motors these sizes, are a little loud, but that is to be expected.  You can throttle down and even on the lowest setting, she runs great.  Doesn’t sound like she wants to die out at all.  We pushed a lot of water to run this engine hot and the motor kept going.  On full throttle we had about three hours of continuous use on the 3.3 qt gas tank.

The only two knocks we have against this motor is when we left the gas on in the cold, sometimes we couldn’t get it started.  This is expected with most motors like this, not just this Honda.  You should always turn the gas off when not in use.  The other knock, which could be Honda, or the manufacturer of the pump system, was the placement of the exhaust.  The exhaust and the outlet to the pump where the same height, so if you were not careful with the hose, it would get burned by the exhaust as it gets very hot.  One nice thing would be for Honda to have a better cover over the exhaust to protect the user or item that comes in contact with it, maybe even have the protective cover have a larger gap between the exhaust and the cover so it doesn’t get so hot.

We did test this engine in winter time, so we didn’t have a chance to run the motor at full capacity in the middle of a blazing summer.  Again, overall we really liked this small , powerful motor.