Just a reminder with the Holidays and colder weather coming don’t forget to change the air in the tires to WINTER air SUMMER air out WINTER air in. Also don’t forget to check the ANTIFREEZE in the BLINKER FLUID.
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And calibrate the flux capacitor…
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Yeah forgot about that.
lol … One of the recent podcast puzzlers, the caller’s snow blower (I think) wouldn’t start. The repairman said he was using the wrong kind of gasoline, but the caller thought this unlikely. Ray concurred w/the repairman, speculated it needed the more volatile winter gas, and had summer gas in the tank.
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I’m not buying that from Ray, but would be happy to hear people weigh in on it. I do get it, as I know about the summer/winter gas thing and why (volatility and temps). But I’ve burned plenty of small engine gallons in the winters (lawn tractor for snow clearing and generator for my frequent power outages). Never ever had a problem with either - no matter when I bought the gas.
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I used my gasoline lawn mower the other day. 4.5 HP. It still has summer gas in the tank. Ambient Temperature was low 50’s, so I let it warm in the sun for 30 minutes before trying to start it. After priming the engine , it started on the first pull as usual. But it ran w/noticeably lower rpm & power than normal for about 15 seconds, then stalled. Restarted w/another priming. Once the engine got fully warmed up after 5 minutes of light- mowing, it ran with the normal rpm and power. I was wondering if the low rpm and low power/stalling would have occurred if I had used winter gas?
as I know about the summer/winter gas thing and
I also never had a problem with gas but being from the south I did know about the different blends of diesel for the summer or winter temps.
I should have added, and you might do the same, but my small engines are all on strict diet of ethanol-free with 1 oz of seafoam / gal (as spec’d by seafoam). The seafoam not only stabilizes but also does whatever cleaning it might be able to do every time the engine runs. Opinions might vary, but I think it matters. Before going strictly non-ethanol I used to have the occasional issue (e.g. carb gunk). But not any longer.
1972 Airens 8hp snowblower. I somrtimes had to give it a shot of ether when pull starting, but after adding an electric starter from a rusted out 6 hp, I had no more starting problems. Granddaughter sold it when she bought the house. The old beast would still throw a solid chute diameter of snow 30’ but it’s lack of safety features scarred her.
I don’t know, can you still buy am Airens with a differential? The 318cc flathead had a lot of grunt at low rpm when dealing with heavy wind packed drifts. When I put the drift bars on it , it would walk through 5" drifts at a slow walkjing pace.
I use the same 87 octane pump for my lawnmower as I use in both my vehicles, probably has ethanol. The Tecumseh carb’s incredibly small diameter fuel metering hole plugs up a couple of times each year, but it is designed so it is pretty easy to clean, 10 minute job. Several neighbor’s have put the the same lawn mower (Sears) out on the curb with a “free” sign, they always start right up after cleaning the hole. The good news is now I have plenty of spare parts … lol …
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Ahrens calls it auto turn now but it’s on all but the more basic models as standard. Zero turn radius.
You reminded me of the time my FIL called because his mower wouldn’t run right. Got there to find it surging really bad and barely running. Ended up finding a single grain of sand wedged perfectly into that metering hole. Looking at it with a loupe, you could see the nearly perfect cube shape of the sand particle in there. The bowl had a bunch of debris and the air filter was pretty dirty as well.
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When I moved out east, had some new coworkers help unload some of my stuff. I had the drift cutters attached but stowed on the sides of the chute. One of them asked- what are those for? Don’t get much snow here, do you? The next year we got a big storm with 2ft and lots of drifting that was well above the top of the bars…
5" drifts?
j/k I know you meant feet.
I’m guessing the primary path for dirt getting into the fuel bowl, then clogging the metering hole is through the priming entrance. Last spring I made a modification to my lawnmower’s priming method which seems to be helping.
Do you actually measure that? I don’t. Little splash, big splash
I do actually measure it. I’ve got a garage measuring stuff for things like that. But you don’t have to. I’m sure that a splash from the gut works well too. If all I had was 1 gal cans I’d probably just “splash.” But with 5 gals, idk what a 5 oz-ish splash looks like, and seafoam ain’t cheap. So when I come back from the gas station, I measure it out for each can and dump it in. (Or sometimes before going to fill).
I have a few measuring cup thingy’s down in the garage also, and I am OCD and overthink the splash thing, and no, I can’t cook… lol
What, you guys don’t do the “bartender with flair” kind of thing where you flip the bottle in the air, catch it with the nozzle pointed down and do a three count of Stabil?
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Good joke, but do be sure to put ENOUGH of whatever “type” of air you do add.
Tires lose pressure in colder weather (Boyle’s Law…, and no not Billy Jo Boyle).
I case you are one of those folks who only check your pressure twice a year–I check mine twice a month, almost always need some air in at least one of 8 tires (2 vehicles). Some rough rural roads here in Maine.
Do you still have the pumpkin spice oil in your engine? Time to switch to peppermint candy cane oil!
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