Gentlemen, start your engines!

Let me remind you of where we left off last week:

We’d got a new battery, put some fresh fuel in, checked the fuel line valve to make sure it was “on” and almost got her started. After lots of head scratching, we decided to pack it in for the day and give it a go the next weekend, starting with cleaning the carb…

Being complete n00bs, we had no idea if the problem of her not starting was related to the carb or not, but we wanted to clean it anyway, if only to see what one looks like. Here’s what we were dealing with, including air filter, prior to dismantling:


Looking pretty grimy, but not too bad:


And here’s what it looked like after dismantling (notice the brass jet in the middle of the float chamber still in there, though – not cleaning it proved stupid and crucial):


And, finally, back on looking shiny and new:


Now, rather than writing lengthy prose about the steps involved, I’m going to list them, one-by-one, so you can appreciate the effort that went into this. Here goes:

1) check the fuel line valve is “on” (as we’d determined last week)
2) confirm we have a spark from the sparkplug
3) try starting her using the electric starter, to no avail, practically draining the battery
4) check fuel line where it’s attached to the carb, nothing coming out
5) discover additional fuel line valve at the other end of the line near the fuel tank
6) try to determine which way that valve is “on” (with a couple of mouthfuls of fuel for Jason… *snigger*)
7) still little to no fuel coming out, so take off the tank
8) drain fuel tank, while cleaning fuel filter as best we can – nothing obviously blocking it, though
9) put tank back on and align both valves to “on” for sure
10) try to kick start it… for ages.
11) spray a little carb cleaner into the carb directly
12) engine splutters a couple of times, including a pretty awesomely pathetic backfire, but she still won’t run
13) checked fuel line AGAIN and there’s no fuel whatsoever getting into the carb
14) fill the tank to the top of the fuel filter to try to get past the apparent blockage
15) now we’re getting fuel
16) try to kick start it… for ages, again, and half the time with the ignition off. D’oh!
17) still no luck
18) remove carb
19) pour small amount of fuel into engine directly
20) she fired up!! Twice!

At this point, we’d eliminated every other possible problem and figured it must be due to the carb. So, we cleaned it again, this time making sure we covered every part. Lo and behold, the jet we overlooked the first time was pretty clogged. A quick spray of the cleaner blew what was a pin-size hole into a proper hole and we reassembled everything again.

Here’s the result (check out our elation quickly turning to panic as we realize the throttle is stuck open):



She hadn’t been run in a couple of years, so red-lining for her first start in a while probably wasn’t the best thing to do, but we fixed the throttle problem (carb wasn’t quite assembled properly), and left her idling gently for a few minutes afterwards while we marveled at our accomplishment.

Step one of this restoration complete!