I own a lawn tractor - a Murry Widebody. The procedure for winterizing it is to siphon all the fuel out of the tank, then let it run itself dry. So, after siphoning it all out, I turned on the choke, pushed the throttle all the way up, and turned the engine on. It chugged for about 40 seconds, smoking a LOT and making loud noises. Finally, it conked out and I wheeled it into the shed. I then realized I had forgotten to turn the choke off after the engine had started. The engine manual explicitly warns against turning the engine off with the choke, but that’s exactly what I did. Is it possible that I damaged the engine in any way? It’s a two cylinder, 17hp Briggs & Stratton.
No, you didn’t damage anything. Choking it simply produces an extremely rich condition, which didn’t hurt a thing in the short period you ran it.
It is recommended that you not use the choke as a “kill”, because the excess fuel tends to “glaze” the sparkplug, which then makes it more and more difficult to start the thing.
Excessively rich conditions can also, over long periods, damage the cylinder bore, because the raw gasoline tends to “wash” the thin film of oil off the cylinder walls, causing extra wear.
On my old 2 stroke outboard they recomend winterizing it by using the choke to kill it to get more oil (from the fuel-oil mix) into the engine. I don’t rember if you were suppose to leave the choke on all winter though
I had a snowmobile that had a two-stroke engine with oil injection. I’m not sure how the carb worked as it consisted of many ‘membranes’. After a summer, the thing wouldn’t run unless I fed gas through the primer. The membranes in the carb had got all gummed up with the gas residue. I replaced them with a carb kit and it worked fine. The same thing may have happened if you have ‘flooded’ it with the choke before storing it.
SO…just leaving the choke on won’t do anything, but you might have to clean the carb to get it running right (even the ‘bbl’ carbs need some cleaning)
There is a product called Stabil that is made to protect engines when they are stored. You empty the fuel tank add Stabil and run the engine until it dies.
It is a good idea. I keep forgetting to use it on mine so I can’t vouch for its effectiveness.