My “snowpup” wouldn’t fire up today to hit a few inches of fresh stuff that landed and that was disappointing, as 4 days earlier when it was 70 degrees it fired up just fine.

I committed a few errors from last winter:

1. I left treated gasoline in the tank.
2. I may not have pulled the cord until there was minor tension to seal off the intake valve.

After pulling 50 times, I figured I checked the gas tank and it was mostly empty. I topped the tank with fresh fuel, 50:1. I went to start it again and no dice. I pulled the spark plug out and it was soaked in fuel. Ugh. Dried the spark plug tip and put it back in. Pulled the cord, still nothing. Figuring something else was wrong, I brought it into the trusty Schwie Shop in the basement.

After a few hours of warming up, I pulled the bottom cover off (2 screws!) and found another problem. The primer hose broke off just behind the bulb. Argh. Worse, the primer line was leaking fuel out the broken end. Surely this is contributing something to the problem. For now, I’m putting a small binder clip on the end of the hose and I’ll order one of these:

44-2750 Body – Primer

While tinkering inside the motor area, I remembered the choke was flinging back and forth last winter. Looking at the parts list it appears the choke is missing a few parts:

632169 Spring – Throttle Return
631184 Washer – Steel
631183 Washer – Felt

Next, I wanted to see if the snow blower was making a spark, so I removed the spark plug, reattached the plug wire, laid the tip of the plug so it was touching the outside of the motor, turned out the lights in the shop, and gently pulled the cord. Boom, a blue spark jumped across, yes! That means I don’t a plug or a plug wire, so I reassembled the machine and brought it out to the garage. First pull and it fired up!

Now, there were several things wrong with this snowblower and some conditions changed, including warming it up to room temperature. I’m still in the process of the repairs as I’ll need to get more parts, but here’s my weak connection of dots as to why it worked 4 days ago and suddenly didn’t today:

I pulled the snowblower out of the garage attic where it was stored on all 4 wheels, brought it outside, fired it up, turned it off, and then hung it by its handle inside the main part of the garage (mind you, last winter’s treated gas was still inside). Jump to today, I take it off the hook in the garage and try to fire it up, nothing. I think what happened was last year’s residual fuel doesn’t want to combust when its cold, but it’s willing to when it’s a few degrees warmer. To test this theory, I’ll run out to the garage tomorrow morning and give it a pull. If it fires up, I’m going to chalk it up to the fact that the old fuel is now burned out and mixed with enough new fuel that its willing to combust. If it doesn’t start up, it’s because I haven’t run it long enough to combust all the fuel in the hose. More later…

** Update 11-16-2020 **

I pulled started the snowblower a couple more times over the next couple days and it started with fewer and fewer pulls until it started with a single pull, I’m pretty sure the cause was old gas in the line.

I went looking to purchase individual parts to make the above repairs and it came to about $20 in parts, so I ended up purchasing a carburetor assembly for $12.95 shipped from Amazon. Will install that soon to fix the broken primer bulb body and loose choke handle – the new carburetor seems to be built better than the original.