I hate small engines.

I am getting ready for the Annual Chip-a-thon in the back yard.

This is the one time a year I go into the way-back and level all of the growth of the pasy year. Weeds, suckers, poison ivy,small children hiding in the bushes, it all gets ground up with an old lawn mower.

Personally, I have no problems with my lawn mower because at the end of the season I run it out of gas and when the regular gas runs out I stuff a good shot of starting fluid in the tank and run it on that until it runs out.

That way the next season the carburator isn't gummed up with stale gasoline.

Of course, I am one of a very few on the face of the planet Earth that does this, even though everyone and their cousin says they do but just seems to forget come mid October.

The small engine shop makes a fortune on that kind of stupidity.

Anyway, the old lawn mower I used to use cratered last year aafter a couple of seasons of major abuse. Mowere are not designed to cut down old growth timber, but if you are patient you can chew up, say a 3/4 inch sapling.

This means I generally have a spare mower, a Craigslist $20 special booting around for this purpose.

I just got a freebie from someone and I know the valves, pistons, etc work because I just got it started on starting ether, telling me that someone put the damned thing away back at the turn of the century with gas in the tank.

When I opened the seacock on the bottom of the bowl, varnih in the form of old gas oozed out.

I knew I had to clean out the carburator and that means the logistics get set in place.

Tools: Check.
Spare gas: check.
Starting fluid: 5 cans. Check.
Colemman fuel: check

Next comes the Chinese puzzle of taking the pleostone era machine apart and a mass of stuck parts and God knows what else. We'll see.

As I write, I have the carb off and it is soaking in a mixture of Coleman fuel and starting ether.The float valve seems to be working OK and I still taste a touch of gasoline in my mouth from where I blew into the fuel line to test the float valve.

I hope this is the last year I have to use a lawn mower in the way-back, but a brush hog costs a fortune.

Then again, I have a guy down the street that is getting too old to use his and has made sounds about selling it cheap.

As soon as I get this mower running I am going to go down the street and check into it.

Maybe if I''m lucky he's feeling a little more poorly today and I can get a deal and a good machine for the Annual Chip-a-thon.

Of course, I'd just bet the jerk put the thing away a couple of seasons ago with gas still in the tank.




my other blog is:http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/