Yard Work 2008 #15

I had a spare hour on Friday, October 17th - so I thought - 'Why not cut the lawn?' That idea sure beat 'Why not dig a hole for a fence post?' or 'Why not check the 401K account and see what we lost today?' Or ask your own question here. As it turns out - it wasn't the simple ten minute chore as was looking for...

The weather here in Oregon is still quite nice - the rain hasn't started the continual drizzle, the sun is bright in the sky, and the temps are still making it into the upper 60s. The lawnmower started right up...and then died. I primed it again and it started up. And it died.

This same thing happened two years ago. I really didn't know what was happening, I just knew that the mower was stalling due to lack of gasoline. So I traced the gas flow from the tank to the engine, looking for anyplace that might be plugged or gummed up - hoping to see a nice metallic part labels 'fuel filter'. No luck with the easy solution. I did manage to solve the problem then - and I even had a few photos of my engine disassemble-ment. Here is one of them, after removing a few of the plastic covering parts.

This time around - I couldn't remember what I did to fix the problem two years ago. I did have a feel of where I should look - so I got out my tools and started to take the mower apart. After half an hour or so of cleaning the dirt and grime off - I took off what I think is the fuel reservoir.

Here is is - the gold colored cylinder below the air intake

(Yahoo Answers had an answer to this problem that called the part a float bowl). This is a small cylinder maybe 2 inches in diameter by 1 1/2 inches in height. This is held onto the carburetor by a threaded nut with a very small hole/passageway in it.

Here it is - all cleaned up
Notice the hole in the nut?

When I saw this - I remembered that this was the choke point for the gasoline flow last time around. So - I got a pin and cleared it out. I didn't find any debris in there... (when looking for the cause of a problem, don't you like to eventually find something?)

This is a float of some kind....not sure how it works!

The next steps in engine disassembly looked much more difficult so I decided to put it all back together and see if it worked. Five minutes later I was cutting the grass.

Now - since I put this all down in a web posting - I can find my own answer in Google the next time my 'lawn mower stalls', 'seems like it isn't getting enough gas flow', 'continues to run as long as the primer button is pushed continuously.' I think my memory is getting worse as Google continues to provide a way to remember stuff...even stuff I never knew in the first place!