I was recently diverted with a quick project for a friend of mine. The owner of this thrower is the same person who owns the Honda lawn mower I did the engine transplant on last winter. He recently dropped off a little single stage Ariens snow thrower that wouldn’t run.
Actually, it would start but not stay running, a classic symptom of a dirty carburetor. This unit has a Tecumseh two-stroke engine and I’d guess it’s 10 to 15 years old. Upon first inspection everything appeared to be easy to get at… or so I thought. Though there is an inspection opening on the bottom of the unit, this only allows access to remove the main jet or float bowl.
To remove the carburetor for cleaning required removing the four motor mount bolts and tiling the engine forward to allow access to the two carburetor mounting screws. Once I had the carburetor off, it was what I expected, the carburetor was good and dirty with varnish and showed signs of moisture. My guess is the unit has not been stored properly over the years..
After complete dis-assembly, I tanked the carb for 24 hours then used compressed air, brake cleaner and very fine copper wire to clean it thoroughly including all the passages. I also installed an OEM rebuild kit which included the fuel needle and seat, and main jet gasket, which incidentally was missing when I disassembled the carburetor. As part of the rebuild a new float bowl and float bowl gasket was installed since the original float bowl showed signs of corrosion. The fuel tank was drained and the fuel replaced with a fresh 50:1 mix.
After buttoning everything up, with a couple of strokes of the fuel primer and the choke it started on the first pull and ran fine. Again, I didn’t complete a video of this project as there are many YouTube videos that demonstrates rebuilding the same or similar carburetors.
