Pull the jets and clean them. I don’t know about weed whackers, but most have 2-stroke engines like the ones in my scooters. The jet will look like a little brass slotted screw. You might have to remove the air cleaner and maybe some other cover to get at the screw, but most of the time the jets are easily accessible. Here is a picture. The jet pulled out will have a teeny tiny little hole in the end. This is what gets clogged. You need to clean it with some carb cleaner and a little wire poker like this. Careful don’t scrape or score the hole – it’s a very precisely made little item. When you have the jet out, squirt some carb cleaner in the hole it came out of.
If you can see a manufacturer’s name on the carb, youtube that, or how to clean carburetor jets, and this will give you a good idea what to look for and how to do it. Apologies if you knew all this stuff already.
Is it a Toro brand mower? If so, then just leave that mother fucker on the curb and get something (anything) else. It’s just not worth the time and effort to keep a Toro running. They have continuous problems with both the fuel jet and the automatic choke. When I had one and every time I needed to use it I’d practically have to rebuild the whole fucking carburetor. I hated that piece of shit more than life itself. If I ever find the fucking idiot that designed this damn thing he’s getting a swift kick to the crotch.
It’s easy to check the spark on a mower. Remove the plug, attach the plug wire, and let the other end of the plug touch the engine. Pull cord. Spark will be evident, if present.
UncleRojelio<<< has no idea of what he is talking about. No trouble or maintenance of any knid with Toro in 5 years. Still going strong.
i think with mowers it will vary with make, model, year and which plant made at and phase of the moon for what you get.
Mine’s a Briggs & Stratton super cheapie I bought four years back.
Two hours ago I hauled it out of the shed to change its oil before mowing the grass (after seven months suspended animation), checked to see if it had gas, primed the carb and very slowly pulled the cord to get more gas into the engine.
The very slow-moving cord was only halfway out when the damn thing started.
So I warmed it up, shut it off, disconnected the plug, dumped the oil, filled it with 5W-30, connected the plug and broke the lawn’s 2015 virginity.
The snowblower fixer-upper man insists I use premium gas for both machines because there’s no ethanol in it that rots the gas and to mix gas stabilizer to the fuel in the gas can. He also says not to drain the gas from the carbs at the end of the season because premium gas with stabilizer won’t let anything rust and will preserve the carb parts and gaskets and keep them supple.
That’s probably why the mower started almost through telepathy.
I should have cleaned the air filter, but the hell with it.
The solution? Generally you have to buy a new weed whacker. The carburetors on those little 2-stroke engines are difficult to clean as the passages are so small. If you can find out what carburetor you have, you can get a rebuild kit and find instructions. I believe there are two major types, Walbro and someone else whose name escapes me. Google Walbro Carburetor and you should find enough to get you going.
I’ve taken them apart, removed the springs and balls and cleaned in carb cleaner, and replaced the diaphragm. I got it back together OK, but I couldn’t get it to run consistently. One was on a weed whacker and one on a leaf blower. Neither one ran again.
We have a sixteen year old mower that has never had oil or plug changed. It usually starts on first pull after sitting all winter, although I think I had to pull it 3 times this year. And no, we don’t treat our cars or motorcycles that way.
I inherited a weedwhacker that hasn’t run in 12 years. I could rebuild the carb with a $22 rebuild kit, but instead I got a new carb on eBay for $38. It’s just not worth my time or money to rebuild the old one when I can buy a brand new one for so cheap. The manufacturer is Zama.
A couple of times our mower would not start in the spring, but emptying the gas tank and filling with fresh gasoline brought it back to life immediately. Now I don’t try to run the mower on gas from last season. I’ll put what’s in the canister in the car, but as for what’s in the mower, for better or worse I just dump the cup of gas on the brick walkway where it kills weeds – I don’t endorse that for everyone, but figure less than a quart every five years won’t have any great consequence.
In the fall I always either put fuel stabilizer (like Sta-Bil) in my tank and let the mower run a bit, or just leave the mower running until it runs out of gas. Either way between that and a solar battery maintainer my riding mower started up first crank this spring.
This. And not just for mowers - pretty much every manufacturer puts their manuals for practically everything online in PDF these days. If I can’t find the paper manual in <5 minutes, I stop looking for it in meatspace and start looking online.
Same here, although I’m averaging more like 10 years lifetime per mower.
And I used to check the gap on my mower spark plugs, but they always had the correct gap, right out of the package, so I stopped bothering with it 5-10 years ago. Haven’t had any problems.
IME, mowers are really, really hard to screw up.
This drove me crazy for a few days…
Do you have the right gas cap on? It turns out that my mower’s gas cap looks exactly like the cap on my gas can, and one day I accidentally swapped them. The mower cap is vented however, and as a result the mower would just chug briefly and die.
Same here. Every year my tractor/mowers/weedwhackers/chainsaws/powerwagon sit overwinter with half tanks of old fuel. Come spring I use some spraystarter and they start right up. If not, I clean the spark-plug and swear I’ll pick up a new one.
I say, get an electric. Sure, the PITA cord is a…PITA…but, for me, electric is a heaven-send. No having to mix the gas and oil, no multi-pulls when the thing starts to get sulky. I will NEVER have to take mine apart, or replace worn out, clogged or leaky parts. If it doesn’t start right up, I check the wall outlet. If it doesn’t work then, I go back to Home Depot.
Get electric.
Unless you live on two acres.
Replaced the spark plug. Still one “almost start” and a ton of nothing. I guess we’re taking it in but seriously, how much less than a new shitty lawnmower is that gonna be?
Personally I’d dig an electric. But he doesn’t want a cord and I ain’t mowing. Plus we just don’t have a ton of spare money lying around now and the gas ones are still cheaper.
We have close to two of lawns, then the areas around the barn and shed. A 3/4 acre pond gets mowed around every other week. Twice a season I mow five acres of pasture (horses prefer grass and mowing keeps weeds in check). I have an electric hedge trimmer, but my small gas chainsaw does an ok job.
Right after mowing everything looks so nice. I keep telling myself this, anyway.
I just bought the Echo battery electric trimmer. 58 volt LiIon battery pack. Works great and I’m on 5 acres. No I don’t trim 5 acres, but all around the house and flower beds. No cord and instant on.
Did you try putting fresh gas in? That’d certainly be worth a try before taking it in.
Note that what I said earlier was “If the starting fluid didn’t cause it to roar to life momentarily, that tells you your problem probably isn’t fuel.” I guess reading back and with the post I’ve quoted it sounds like it did roar to life momentarily with the fluid, yes? So the problem may be fuel or fuel delivery related. Perhaps our focus on the spark plug was unwarranted.