Quote:
Originally Posted by pchuckie
Pull the black altitude adjust knob off the bottom of the carb. Mark the face of the now exposed brass mixture knob with a sharpie. Count how many turns it takes to close it all the way closed. Then open back to that same point plus a 1/4turn.
The best way to prevent the gas ruining the carb is to use the screw on the bottom of the carb and drain the carb when it's going to sit for a while and not be used. Running an engine out of gas doesn't work either. A little bit of gas is always left behind that will varnish. And there is always a little dirt and debris in the bottom of the float bowl the will get sucked into the orifices when you refill and try to restart.
The only way the Seafoam would work is if you removed the fuel line to the carb and some how got the Seafoam inside the carb float bowl. Spraying any kind of carb cleaner down the butter fly of the just wastes carb cleaner.
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Agreed about just draining the float bowl with the screw when you're done with the generator for a relatively extended period. However I don't know how many/which models actually have a drain screw. But my point is that if you HAVE a drain screw that will allow you to drain your float bowl of the fuel that's in it when you're done with your gen for a few weeks, most definitely do it. If you do you won't have problems when you run it the next time.
And for the seafoam trick, again you're right that spraying it in the carb does nothing. If you expect the carb is fouled because it sat with oldish gas in it, you must run fuel mixed with seafoam through it to have any hope of clearing it. Spraying it in does exactly...nothing. It's intended to run through while the engine is running to do it's work. I am a motorcyclist so have an auxiliary fuel tank because I need to do some work with the bikes running but with the fuel tank off. It works nicely for feeding the gen a seafoam/gas mix to clean it out. I put about a 25% seafoam/75% gasoline mix in my auxiliary tank
Robot Check, disconnected the fuel line at the carburetor and connected the aux tank, and let the seafoam/fuel mix run the gen for about an hour shortly after I bought my used RV. That did the trick. The seafoam works by actually running through the internal passages of the carburetor, cleaning them over time as it goes. That's why spraying it does nothing...it needs to work with the carb actually "doing it's thing", moving the fuel/seafoam mix through itself.
So, if you have a problem with the generator not running correctly, try the auxiliary tank idea to be able to easily run a seafoam and fuel blend through the gen. And, if you're lucky enough to have a fuel drain screw on the bottom of your carb, use that when you're done with the gen and won't use it for, say, at least a couple weeks and that should keep everything happy for the next time you need to run it.