Yeah … I have thoughts … but I’m not allowed to post them here …
My thoughts on your mower problem is emptied fuel lines … pressing the primer only sprays the carb … you still have to pull the gas through the lines before the engine will run proper. Try the primer six times and see if that helps … then try nine times and see if it works better … if you do happen to flood the thing, just pull the spark plug and let it dry out … alternately, pulling that cord that much is good for your health.
My riding John Deere has an Evaporative Emission Control system that seems to just suck all the gas right out of the fuel lines. If she sits a week I have to just lay on the electric starter until she eventually starts. After just one day she starts right up.
Before rebuilding the carburetor check the fuel lines for cracks, especially the parts the go inside the fuel tank.
Ethanol in gas causes the fuel lines to lose flexibility, harden up, and crack. That was the problem I recently fixed with my chainsaw. When I tried to pull the fuel lines out of the tank to check the filter the lines just cracked and fell apart.
It would also start and run for a short time with starting fluid but just wasn’t getting fuel to the engine.
Ethanol blends are the death of many small engines.
No fuel filter. The fuel line looks good. The carb bowl was full of gas. I just can’t tell that it’s getting anywhere from there.
I’ll pull the spark plug tonight and see how it looks. I would have last night but my socket set only came with the smaller spark plug socket and of course, this is the larger one. If that doesn’t work (I’m not terribly hopeful), I’ll probably just replace the carburetor. If I spent the time cleaning and replacing seals and whatnot and it still didn’t start, I’d never know if I had done it properly.
I wonder if your primer bulb is cracked or leaky or the internal pump valve is leaky. It sounds like it needs the engine spun a few times to draw gas into the carb.
Possibly relevant anecdote. I have a Honda lawnmower that used to start on the first or second pull. Over time, it became harder to start until it got to the point where the only way I could start it was to spray starting fluid into it over and over.
After three years of this, it occurred to me to wonder why it was so easy to spray starter fluid into the carb when the choke was supposedly closed. It turned out that the cable had stretched and the choke was no longer working. So I had been getting it started by spraying enough starting fluid to warm the engine up enough to sputter along until it no longer need to be choked. A couple of minutes with pliers and a screwdriver and it was starting on the first or second pull again.
I had a similar problem with my motorcycle every year until someone explained it to me. The evaporation of shorter-chain carbon molecules leaves a gas that smells like varnish. This is sticky. Usual “no start” is prtty simple. In the Good Old Days before fuel injection, and nowadays with small motors-
The gas flows by a gas line into the carburetor bowl. There’s a float in the bowl -when the bowl is full, the float is at the top and no more gas flows into the bowl. As air sucked past the carburetor jets also sucks out gas, the level of gas in the bowl drops and the float goes down to allow more gas into the bowl.
If you leave an engine sit, the gas will gunk up and stick the float where it was - in the up/no flow position.
You can verify this by rapping the bottom or side of the carb bowl with a wrench or hammer. Many time, this will loosen the float enough to drop so gas starts flowing. Regular gas flow over the next few days should help dissolve enough of the gunk to make the float work properly.
Or, you could clogged jet, clogged filter, deformed rubber etc as above posters mention.
I wonder where you can get one at that price. I have a lawnmower with a B&S 625 series motor. I looked it up on Amazon, and with Prime, it’s $39.95. Free two-day shipping. I could have removed the bowl, cleaned it out, and put it back on in less time that it took to look the information up.
After waiting two days for delivery, you still have to put it on. Removing the airfilter housing, disconnecting the throttle and other hoses (I believe there is some kind of emission stuff in there), and the two bolts that hold the carburetor to the engine (you better hope you don’t break on of those screws as the steel screws tend to get stuck in the aluminum engine block), then reversing those steps and putting the new one back on is going to take some time. Of course, with a new carb, you may have to set the mixture and idle screws.
Dropping the bowl, cleaning it out, and putting it back on seems a lot easier (and cheaper) to me, but, as they say, YMMV.
Fixing hardened and cracking fuel lines with a chainsaw? Seems a bit of homicidal maniac type overkill, don’t ya think? I would think you could replace the lines with just a screwdriver.
Same mower without the electric start; same problem after 5 years of use. Took off carb, cleaned everything I could get to, got it to start but not run beyond a few seconds. Repair place said ethanol gums up internal lines and attacks gaskets. Bought new carb, installed and no problem. Switched to non-ethanol gas. Shoot, even another 5 years would be good.
Other question above. Agree that the primer bulb is likely shot, cracked, has a gasket leak.
