An unexpected victory
Mar. 28th, 2025 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickAfter work today, I went up to the shed to fetch out the wood splitter. (It'd been put away, tank empty, at the close of last year and parked in by the mower trailer and stuff.) Before I drug it out of the shed, I put in some fuel (about a cup) and tested to see if it'd fire up. No sense hauling it out if it won't start.
I adjusted the choke and the throttle and pulled the handle vigorously. Cough, sputter quit. (This is normal for first effort of the year.) I adjusted the choke slightly and pulled again. Cough, catch, die... and gasoline started pouring out of the little metal bowl tucked behind the air filter. Well, shit. That ain't good.
The little metal bowl tucked behind the air filter is a carburetor, a thing used to mix the fuel with the air. This is how engines worked before fuel injection which is some modern thing that does not involve carburetors. On small engines like for snow throwers and wood splitters and so forth, it's still cheaper to do carburetor instead of fuel injection. These small engines ALSO frequently have manual chokes that you have to adjust to get them to start in the cold. The choke is where you, a thinking human being, make decisions about how much fuel your engine is going to need to be able to run. If you get it wrong, the engine will not start. Good luck, soldier. Also, you get to adjust the choke as the engine warms up so that it can run more more normally. If you rush that choke adjustment or do it wrong, your engine will also die. Good times.
Anyway, for a wood splitter carburetor, the fuel comes in from the gas tank via a small rubber tube. The small rubber tube has squeeze-y clamps on it to hold it to the gas tank and carburetor fittings. I know this because the little rubber tube has died before and that ALSO has gasoline spilling all over the floor of the garage. But this was not a little rubber tube problem -- I checked that first. The little rubber tube was fine.
The air, not that it matters, comes through the air filter that is bolted onto the engine between the "outside" and the carburetor. But, since we were not having an air problem, I wasn't overly worried about the air part of the program.
I got a container to put under the gasoline dribbles so that I wouldn't have a small lake of gasoline on the garage floor. I waited for the dribbles to stop, which they did eventually. I took the air filter off and found a bolt on the bottom of the carburetor, which I also undid. If I'd known about the carburetor bolt first, I could probably have skipped the air filter step but I didn't know about the carburetor bolt first. Live and learn.
Some more gasoline spilled out when I took the carburetor bolt off, but not much. Inside the little metal bowl part, there's a float thing that floats up and shuts off the gasoline flow when there is "enough" gasoline in the little metal bowl. It works kind of like a toilet float. I wiggled it up and down a bit and it seemed to move fine. I also took a paper towel and some more gasoline (fresh) and wiped out the little metal bowl and cleaned everything off and put it all back together. There was some grit or ick in the little metal bowl and cleaner is better for carburetors, so maybe that was an issue?
At that point, I added some more fuel (not a whole lot) to the tank and tried firing up the splitter again. Reader, I shit you not, it worked. Fired right the hell up. No leaking gasoline all over the place.
Go me. Fixing my woodsplitter like a fucking boss.
And where did I learn all this shit about small engine repair?
Waylie. Back in the day, Waylie used to fix small engines for people in the Philly metro area. Lawnmowers, snow throwers, that kind of thing. And one day, some years ago, he was regaling Lala (I was also there but the narrative was directed at Laur, not me.) with how effing stupid suburban dudes were and how they were totally willing to pay him $200 to come "fix" their snow thrower or lawnmower or whatever that "wouldn't start" when (and he was chortling, so pleased was he with himself) mostly what was wrong was that the carburetor needed to be cleaned. I can hear him and his not-an-inside-voice in my head right now... "And, Laur, get this, it's so damn easy. Like five minutes. It's FIVE MINUTES and one bolt and then the engine fires right up. They think I'm a genius and they pay me two hundred dollars!!!"
The entire tutorial I got on "carburetor cleaning" was that. "And, Laur, get this, it's so damn easy. Like five minutes. It's FIVE MINUTES and one bolt and then the engine fires right up. They think I'm a genius and they pay me two hundred dollars!!!" That was the tutorial.
*sigh* The little shit was right. Cleaning out the carburetor is not hard. It is dead easy. Sometimes it makes the engine work, just like new.
Fuck. And now I have to tell Waylie that (a) he was right and (b) I actually do listen (sometimes) when he talks and (c) he more or less enabled me to fix my own wood splitter.
Waylie doesn't get many wins from me. And this one is legit a win. I 100% would not have tried to take apart my wood splitter without Waylie's chortling about how dumb suburban men in the greater Philly area were. He probably does not even remember saying that, but I remember him saying it.
Anyway. Then it rained, so I am going to split wood tomorrow.
I adjusted the choke and the throttle and pulled the handle vigorously. Cough, sputter quit. (This is normal for first effort of the year.) I adjusted the choke slightly and pulled again. Cough, catch, die... and gasoline started pouring out of the little metal bowl tucked behind the air filter. Well, shit. That ain't good.
The little metal bowl tucked behind the air filter is a carburetor, a thing used to mix the fuel with the air. This is how engines worked before fuel injection which is some modern thing that does not involve carburetors. On small engines like for snow throwers and wood splitters and so forth, it's still cheaper to do carburetor instead of fuel injection. These small engines ALSO frequently have manual chokes that you have to adjust to get them to start in the cold. The choke is where you, a thinking human being, make decisions about how much fuel your engine is going to need to be able to run. If you get it wrong, the engine will not start. Good luck, soldier. Also, you get to adjust the choke as the engine warms up so that it can run more more normally. If you rush that choke adjustment or do it wrong, your engine will also die. Good times.
Anyway, for a wood splitter carburetor, the fuel comes in from the gas tank via a small rubber tube. The small rubber tube has squeeze-y clamps on it to hold it to the gas tank and carburetor fittings. I know this because the little rubber tube has died before and that ALSO has gasoline spilling all over the floor of the garage. But this was not a little rubber tube problem -- I checked that first. The little rubber tube was fine.
The air, not that it matters, comes through the air filter that is bolted onto the engine between the "outside" and the carburetor. But, since we were not having an air problem, I wasn't overly worried about the air part of the program.
I got a container to put under the gasoline dribbles so that I wouldn't have a small lake of gasoline on the garage floor. I waited for the dribbles to stop, which they did eventually. I took the air filter off and found a bolt on the bottom of the carburetor, which I also undid. If I'd known about the carburetor bolt first, I could probably have skipped the air filter step but I didn't know about the carburetor bolt first. Live and learn.
Some more gasoline spilled out when I took the carburetor bolt off, but not much. Inside the little metal bowl part, there's a float thing that floats up and shuts off the gasoline flow when there is "enough" gasoline in the little metal bowl. It works kind of like a toilet float. I wiggled it up and down a bit and it seemed to move fine. I also took a paper towel and some more gasoline (fresh) and wiped out the little metal bowl and cleaned everything off and put it all back together. There was some grit or ick in the little metal bowl and cleaner is better for carburetors, so maybe that was an issue?
At that point, I added some more fuel (not a whole lot) to the tank and tried firing up the splitter again. Reader, I shit you not, it worked. Fired right the hell up. No leaking gasoline all over the place.
Go me. Fixing my woodsplitter like a fucking boss.
And where did I learn all this shit about small engine repair?
Waylie. Back in the day, Waylie used to fix small engines for people in the Philly metro area. Lawnmowers, snow throwers, that kind of thing. And one day, some years ago, he was regaling Lala (I was also there but the narrative was directed at Laur, not me.) with how effing stupid suburban dudes were and how they were totally willing to pay him $200 to come "fix" their snow thrower or lawnmower or whatever that "wouldn't start" when (and he was chortling, so pleased was he with himself) mostly what was wrong was that the carburetor needed to be cleaned. I can hear him and his not-an-inside-voice in my head right now... "And, Laur, get this, it's so damn easy. Like five minutes. It's FIVE MINUTES and one bolt and then the engine fires right up. They think I'm a genius and they pay me two hundred dollars!!!"
The entire tutorial I got on "carburetor cleaning" was that. "And, Laur, get this, it's so damn easy. Like five minutes. It's FIVE MINUTES and one bolt and then the engine fires right up. They think I'm a genius and they pay me two hundred dollars!!!" That was the tutorial.
*sigh* The little shit was right. Cleaning out the carburetor is not hard. It is dead easy. Sometimes it makes the engine work, just like new.
Fuck. And now I have to tell Waylie that (a) he was right and (b) I actually do listen (sometimes) when he talks and (c) he more or less enabled me to fix my own wood splitter.
Waylie doesn't get many wins from me. And this one is legit a win. I 100% would not have tried to take apart my wood splitter without Waylie's chortling about how dumb suburban men in the greater Philly area were. He probably does not even remember saying that, but I remember him saying it.
Anyway. Then it rained, so I am going to split wood tomorrow.
