Do it Yourself: Re: [DIY] Lawn mower starting

25 September 2013

Re: [DIY] Lawn mower starting

Everybody sells Seafoam. Even Wallyworld.

Google Jers Tablet
Woodhaven, MI

On Sep 24, 2013 9:27 PM, "Terry Sullivan" <terry12572@earthlink.net> wrote:

Thanks for the tip about SeaFoam. I'd never heard of it and they don't have it at my local hardware store, but I've ordered a can from Amazon. I gather that they advise using one ounce per gallon of fuel, but found the following on another forum. Sounds pretty extreme...wonder if doing this could cause problems:

The best way to fix this is to take the carb apart and clean it, but most people don't want to go that far.

The next best method to run a really strong mix of seafoam/gas in it to clean it out.

Drain all the gas, put equal amounts of seafoam and gas back in (you don't need much for a mower, maybe 8oz of each) then run the engine (you will probably need full choke). Once the thing starts to smoke like crazy (I mean lots of smoke to the point where you think something is wrong) shut the engine off and let it sit overnight.

Top it off with fresh fuel to dilute the rest of the seafoam even more and then run the mower like normal.

To prevent this in the future, don't store fuel in the mower for more than 3 weeks or so unless you treat it. The Ethanol blended fuels are complete murder on small engines, thank a misguided greenie for your problem :)

This is the best product to protect against ethanol gum up in a small engine.

At 07:59 AM 9/24/2013, you wrote:

We have the ethanol blends in Houston. I put some sea form additive in the tank every fill up and keeps it starting fine, and running smooth. Discovered the sea form while trying to start my outbourd motor which wasn't run for many years, couldn't get it to start. After some sea form added to the gas, and run thru the system, It started up and ran fine.