And from my experience it’s because people don’t take care when putting them up for the season. You need to run those engines DRY before putting up for season. Been doing that for decades and I’ve never had a carb problem since.
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Even that is often not enough. I did that with my snow blower and it would not start the next season. I made the mistake of using E10 gasoline and it gummed up the carburetor. I can get ethanol free gas at Home Depot for about $20/gallon and that’s cheaper and much easier than getting the carb cleaned every year.
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My 3.5HP four stroke outboard leaves gas in the bowl after running the tank dry. My little generator has a bowl drain built in.
A spark tester is your friend. My coil failed in my lawn mower. The girl at the counter said they are usually lifetime parts but not this one. A few years later my mower was stalled in the back yard. Spark tester showed no spark. Towed it to the garage and ordered a new coil. When I pulled the flywheel off I discovered the wire pinched and grounded out. Put the new coil on and stored the old coil for next time. Happens on chain saws pretty often though and on those little two cycle snow shovels. I saw buy two with one for parts. Cheaper in the long run.
I’ve been using E-10 (no other choice around here) for decades. My current snowblower (Ariens 834) is over 15 years old and I’ve never had that problem. Starts right up every fall.
Here in San Jose there is no “off” season. We use the garden equipment year round. If anything we use it more in the winter than the summer. Absent a clog in the carb, the most common reason the engine won’t start is b/c it is too cold. Often easily solved w/a small dose of starter spray
Knucklehead diyer opinion.
I pour gaaoline stabilizer into the tank of the snowblower at the end of the season. I use a non-ethanol.50:1 premix that costs me about $5 a can. It’s expensive, but the can lasts all season.
I have never had problems starting this snowblower before. I should have tried to start ig back in the fall and if it didn’t fire up, it would’ve been warm enough in my garage to attempt to fix it.
The reason I suspect the ignition model is that it doesn’t fire at sll. On other small engines where I have had carburetor problems, the engine starts but won’t stay running.
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I’d be surprised if a local home improvement or hardware store didn’t have cans of non-ethanol gasoline for sale. That’s the only way I can get it. It appears that you don’t need it and that’s great.
Maybe they do. Since I’ve never needed it, I never looked for it.
I have purchssed cans of the non ethanol.fuel at Walmart and at.Rural King. I had a 2 stroke rototiller. I had trouble starting it with.gas I mixed with 2 stroke oil at the gas station pump that contained ethanol. For the small garrden plot and my short driveway, I gladly pay the extra cost of the non ethanol cans of fuel.
Back in the 1950s when I was a teenager, we had a 2 stroke Lawnboy mower. The fuel requirement was 1/2 pint of 30 weight non detergent oil to a gallon of gasoline-a 16:1 ratio. I never had a starting problem with that engine. Back then the gasoline wasn’t 10% ethanol. The 16:1 fuel allowed us to fog for mosquitoes as we mowed with the LawnBoy mower.
You forgot the balance of my post where I said that. Thanks for agreeing with me.