little lawmower help needed

[moombadaze]

In florida you can allmost mow year round so I never winterize the lawmowers-have 2, a rider and walkbehind.


3 weeks ago
Tried to fire up the rider and felt like the battery was dead-could have been as it was a few years old, got new battery-still wont start. kept trying and finally started spinning over. Started up and smoked like I have never seen. Back out of the shed and had a huge wet spot under it(never leaked in the last 8 yrs), then ran out of gas. Filled with gas and its still smoking BAD. parked it and grabbed the walk behind to mow and it ran crappy too.

Check the rider last night and the 3 gallon tank is down to about a 1/4 left and then checked the oil level-its about 5 inchs up the dipstick and smells like gas-how could gas be getting into the crankcase? The walkbehind is running like crap-poping,coughing and wanting to stall. It also had a empty gas tank-bone dry and I swear I didnt leave it that way the last time it was used. I did not check the oil level and on the 1st pull I damm near tore my arm off from it not wanting to spin over.

Could ethinol be causing all this???? And if so what is the fix that I can do?

thanks

[rvette]

sounds like the rider may have something wrng in the piston area. Cold be cracked (major issue) or as simple as a blown head gasket (less major). Either way it's going to have to be torn apart.

[harmsway]

Sounds like the needle & seat in the carb is stock open allowing gas to pour into the cylinder. May be trash in the carb bowl. You may want to pull the carb off and clean it out. If you can get a carb kit that would be better, but I have good luck with out a kit. Make sure to change oil after you pull the carb apart. It will mostly like smoke for 20-30 minutes once you get it fix, but will clear up.

[Huffer632]

I actually just started working at a lawn and garden repair place, and it sounds like you probably used some gas with ethanol in it and that it gummed up your carbs pretty bad. Like the guy above me said, it will smoke but if you clean the carbs good you should be fine. I would see if you can get some small wire and run it through as many of the holes that you can on the carbs. Also, we don't really use carb cleaner at the shop because it is so strong it can eat up some of the fittings inside the carb (mostly soft rubber or paper gaskets). When we do use carb cleaner we alwasy re clean everything that we used carb cleaner on with brake clean.

[zabooda]

Good advice I would say. I try not to use ethanol in the small engines anymore. Sometimes they sit too long so I go to the Conoco stations here that don't have ethanol and the price difference is getting where I may start using that in my vehicles too.

[2007 Outback V]

I think harmsway has got it. Not a major issue, but the carb needs cleaning. I'd start simple, no need to tear everything apart if you don't have too. Should have high speed and idle needles on the carb. Turn them all the way in, remember how many turns, usually 3 turns and 1.5 turns respectively (engines differ). Remove needles, and blast the holes with some air, should be enough to get the culprit out. If you know how to take off the carb, clean out the float bowl as well. Change your oil and fire her back up.

Good luck

[sandm]

hardest part about doing carbs on a rider is remembering how all the linkage goes back together. there's only a couple of rods and levers, but it's easy to not get them back in the right way. take a pic or a diagram so you remember
had to do the sears rider here a couple of times as I didn't draw it all out.