The Old Lawnmower Club
Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers
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3 months of non running, am I causing problems...?

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andy 7671 Wed, 27/08/2014

Well its taken a while but all parts are now ordered, fabricated, painted etc etc for the cutter reel sub assembly, should get round to assembly in the next month. (Commodore B17)

 

Whats worrying me now is I havent started it in 3 months, should I be concerned about fuel line, jet blockages due to degradation,any preventative measures I should be taking, I never ran it out of petrol, just drained tank.

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wristpin Wed, 27/08/2014

With a bit of luck you  are probably OK . Put a bit of pump fresh fuel in it and see how you go.. Engine manufacturers are saying to only buy fuel that you will use in 30 days. May be a bit ott but not a bad starting point. Fuel stored in a full sealed can will outlast that that has been shaken and aerated and left in a machine's fuel tank with a large surface area exposed to the air.

There  are various brands of fuel stabiliser or preservative on the market all claiming to combat the adverse effects of the ethanol which is now added to pump fuel at around ten percent and we are threatened with thirteen percent. I use the Briggs and Stratton product that was called Fuel Fit and now Fuel Fresh (or was it the other way round ?)

Whatever  brand you use,  it must be added to fresh fuel; it won't rescue fuel that's already on the turn.

andy 7671 Thu, 28/08/2014

Thanks yet again Wristspin.

​So does the stabiliser eat away at solid residue or just enhance new fuel....?

Would spraying carb cleaner down fuel lines and carb be worthwhile or is its use confined to cleaning components...?

wristpin Thu, 28/08/2014

Stabiliser is marketed as a preventative and not a cure but I have double dosed it in a running engine and convinced myself that it has made a difference! If the fuel has degraded to the extent that it is "waxing" in the jets etc, dismantling plus carb cleaner or ultimately a session on an ultra sonic cleaning tank will be required.

I've never tried squirting carb cleaner through a running engine but I don't suppose it would do any harm in small quantities and it's probably little different from the fuel system conditioners that a sold for regular addition to the tank. In excess it may tend to "dry out" the bore..

In the days of low performance, carburetor fed car engines, that needed regular de-cokes, Redex used to promote a "ten minute tune up"  which involved dribbling neat Redex down the carb throat of a warmed up running engine . Get it right and the neighbourhood was obscured by white smoke, get it wrong and you stalled the engine and had to dose with a bit of petrol to get it going - even more white smoke! Either way one was convinced that something had been achieved even if the neighbours were not too impressed!

 

andy 7671 Thu, 28/08/2014

Yeah, redex, I well remember trying to do that, slackening the pinch bolt and turning distributor, listening to twin carbs with a bit of hose...thought I was so clever, them were the days..

wristpin Thu, 28/08/2014

http://www.gunson.co.uk/item.aspx?code=G4074

Think that I may still got one somewhere left over from car fettling days in the 60s but it seems that they are still made! Must dig it out and see if it will work in a Villiers!

As for listening to inlet noise with a bit of pipe I know that I still have a Crypton air flow meter and also some fairly crude pointers for sticking in the top of SUs and Strombergs to see if the pistons are lifting by equal amounts - happy days!