B&S Engine starts but won't run

The main jet in the bottom of the carb is plugged. 99.99%

My first thought is that it is gummed-up with varnish and other gasoline products. There is a product called "Gumout" carb ceaner that has worked well for me many times.

If there's gas in the bowl and it's not reaching the intake something is plugged, whether you can see it or not.

If no better ideas come up I'd try dunking the casting (disassembled as far as it'll go) in a pot of Pine-Sol on a hotplate outdoors. It's a fairly aggressive treatment, if you have access to an ultrasonic cleaner that would be a good, cautious first step. Boiling Pine-Sol etches zinc rather harshly, removing galvanizing from steel and leaving brass jets pink. It'll likely do the same to zinc-based die casting alloys. A little etch might be ok, a lot is apt to be destructive.

I used this method on carbs for a Suzuki SV650S and it cured a rough slow running problem very neatly, at the cost of removing all the surface zinc on both jets and brackets.

hth,

bob prohaska

Yep. The gas plugs the holes in the fuel pick up tube and the main jet.

+1. Most people don't run the engine out of fuel before storage, and the old fuel varnishes up the jets as it dries.

Chances are good that the pump didn't get a douche of pump protectant way back when, either (Most people forget that.) so the chances of a failed pump are pretty high.

Get a 1 or 5 gal bucket ($25-$200) of Berryman's Carb Dip. Strip and dip the carbs. Gumout works for gooey, but doesn't work at all for hardened deposits. Ditto my fave carb cleaner, Berryman's B-12 Chemtool. It's great, but not good enough for hardened crap. Hmm, looking at the SDS on both, I think the Greenies killed CarbDip. Maybe the Chemtool is the better of the two now, and Gumout tried to copy Chemtool.

In any case, for you, Gunner, you'll likely have to import anything which will actually work. The R O Kalifornia bans the good stuff.

THANK YOU everybody. Took off carb one more time thinking that the bowl fastener probably functions also as a gas inlet. (I've seen that before ) Wrong! But I found a tiny,tiny jet perpendicular to the gas flow that was plugged. A sewing needle and a hammer unclogged it, and the machine purrs rather nicely Thank you for pointing me to 'supply' problem. Ivan Vegvary

A dine wite. like used on tags, poked up the jet dets the jod ctarted, then dode the fuel with B-12 or Sea Foam and run on choke untill the jet clears.

Run ethanol free (generally premium) fuel - treated with SeaFoam particularly for storage - and run the carb cry for long term storage.

I've seen this:

--jsw

How's that??

Greenies wherever there is any copper content - including brass jets. Greenies plug jets. Hooch absorbs water too - when things cool off you get phase separation - which leaves water in the bottom of the tank and float bowl - which rusts out the tank or float bowl eventually - and makes it hard to start the engine on the short term. Water doesn't burn very well.. The hooch is hard on some fuel lines and gaskets too

- as well as diaphragms in "regulator" carbs.

I've run across more than one instance of every one of these - not on MY equipment mind you - I stay clear of ethanol fuel for small engines (and airplanes)

a strange feel - with a couple of previously mashed pinkies thrown in.

AvGas is hooch free, but has several times more lead than the old Sunoco 260. Marinas usually have hooch free mid grade.. Any airport with mo-gas for STC will be hooch free.

The lead content will ruin your catalytic converter if you put it in a car.

Better. But 'Effin New Electron, like FNG?

We can't help the half-light or old mashers, but if you get a new keyboard with the nibs still on F and J, that should help.

$13.59, delivered! I should get one myself. Me nibs're gone, too.

Strange, wot? I've never seen anything like it in anything I've rebuilt, and the count has to be over 50 through the years. Thin slime from water/algae buildup in long-stored vehicles was the worst I ran into.

The Greenies I was referring to were the environmentalists whackos who said that the nasty chemicals (which really -worked- to clean carbs) were bad for the environment and made the (fellow Liberal employees of the) gov't restrict them, hence all the shitty cleaners we have nowadays. It takes 5 gallons of the new crap (and several days of work) to equal what 1/4 pint of the old 'bad' stuff could do in half an hour (by itself), and the bad stuff was reusable ten times. I fail to see, to this day, anything Greenies have accomplished.

I can imagine that. RE: being hard on gaskets/diaphragms, everything nowadays is made with viton, which is impervious, designed to withstand the chemical additives.

I'd be a mite picky about my airplane fuel, too.

When Oregon mandated oxygenated (ethanol) gas in 2004?, my gas mileage went down 15%. If I have to burn 15% more gas when using 10% ethanol, how can that -possibly- be better for the environment or the attempt to stop importing foreign oil for fuel? Especially when ethanol has been proven to consume more energy to create than it gives back? I'd like to whup these idiots upside the haid, I would.