Bad Gas!

Dumping out good gas and throwing away good spark plugs might seem easier than actually understanding and diagnosing problems, unfortunately it won't do any good unless there was actually a problem with the fuel or plug to begin with. It might pay to just be a little more accurate when mixing your fuel instead of throwing it away every time you think there's a problem. And Mike Maas proved a few years ago that spark plugs don't 'go bad'.
 
Maybe you haven't read the posts here (Ahem, I am so surprised), but what Steve was talking about was a piece of equipment that wasn't often used... In which case it would stand to reason that you'd dump the old fuel & get new.
But, hey... I'm just a dumb chick. Si ???
 
Actually Mike made a strong argument but he did not prove that plugs don't go bad. I have in my stable a Husky 371XP that was my father's. In the middle of the last job he used it on it stopped in the middle of teh felling cut on a big tree. --The insulator fell off the plug into the combustion chamber.
 
Buy a can of carb clean, take it appart spray it down and blow it out. Easy Peasy!!

I am a carburetor retard. I have a bad history of losing some little screw or other part and then ending up carrying in a container of parts to my saw shop. The hedge trimmer acts like it isn't getting enough gas. I don't know the model but it is the largest hedge trimmer that Stihl makes, it is a professional model, and it is 4 years old. Now in my limited experience, acting like it isn't getting enough gas can either be from actualy not getting enough gas because the fuel filter is plugged up, or some gas metering orfice is plugged up with crap. Or it can be because it is getting too much air from air leaking through some little diaphram or a vacuum leak at some gasket or something. Or from air leaking into a place that is supposed to have gas in it. Like the little hose in the gas tank. Another reason I am reluctant to tackle this is that I am already wearing too many hats. I am the bidder, the climber sometimes, the mechanic on the larger equipment, the stump grinder, the bucket flyer, the truck driver, the tractor driver, and so on. So if I start on this and get called away with the carburator apart and in a hour or so I come back to it it will most likely be dark so it will have to wait until tomorrow. At which time I'm busy all day taking out 5 Modesto Ash trees in Los Banos 40 miles away.

So when I get back to the carburator in a couple of days I don't have one of those minds that can just pick up where I left off. I'm totally lost, and have to spend the next half hour or so reacquianting myself with all the little needle valves and springs and O-rings and such. All the time I'm thinking to myself "if I would have taken this to the saw shop it would be done". Now replacing the bearings on my disk chipper or something like that, that I can do.
 
Luckily I can still get non ethanol gas here.

So if it is non-ethanol, does it have MTBE? Ethanol was a (poor) replacement for MTBE.

Ethanol sucks and is corrosive as all get out. Plus it has to be mixed at the terminal instead of at the refinery.
 
I thought MTBE was not used anymore. I looked though, and it is on the east coast except NY and Con.

We haven't hada storage prob with 6 month old gas but I'm not sure if they use ethanol for an oxygenator.


Sometimes you can hardly see what's wrong with a sparkplug but they are bad.

Steve,

On your chainsaw that runs worse on each tank...You could check your fuel line visibly. Could be cracked. That you should be able to change without much disassembly. Your right on the carb surgery though-sometimes I wonder why didn't I take this someplace? Just getting the carb off is the worst sometimes.
 
Are you buying gas with ethanol in it? The El Cheapo stations around here all have '10% ethanol' stickers on the pumps. I won't put that crap in my saws because it eats carbs. You're in the midwest where ethanol is a lot more prevalent. I'd recommend either avoiding ethanol for your equipment or else use a little extra mix oil and not keep the fuel around more than 30 days. Ethanol breaks down way too quickly.

mmm, ive been running eth in my saws since it first came out---and have had zero carb problems. welll---the diaphrapm on the trimmer finally failed--but it was only 28 years young
 
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