Cleaning your push mower’s carburetor is an important step in maintaining the quality of your lawn. If you don’t clean the carburetor, gas will continue to flow into it and eventually clog it up. This article explains how to clean a carburetor on your push mower correctly, with detailed instructions.
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Dirty Carburetor Symptoms
If your push mower’s carburetor is dirty, you may notice that your lawnmower doesn’t start. Gasoline will continue to flow into the clogged-up carburetor and it won’t be able to perform its job properly.
- Unusual or unexpected sputtering from your mower
- Random loss of power when trying to cut grass
- Difficulty getting up hills and slopes with the mower
Detailed Guide on How to Clean Lawn Mower Carburetor
The following sections provide detailed instructions on how to clean your push mower’s carburetor.
Tools Needed
- Carb cleaner spray, or another type of solvent that is safe for the carburetor (available at most hardware stores)
- Goggles and gloves/safety glasses are recommended when cleaning any part of a lawnmower since there may be some small parts that can come loose during this process. You want to protect yourself from getting cut by these sharp pieces or chemicals in order to avoid injury.
Check the Air Filter
The first thing to do after you have completed all of the steps below is to check your air filter. Cleaning the carburetor only works if it has a clean air intake, so make sure that this part is also in good condition for optimal performance. If you find any holes or cracks in the filtering system, replace with a new one and follow these instructions again later on when finished checking over everything else.
Remove Carburetor
For this process, you will need to remove the carburetor from your push mower. This part is not completely necessary if it works properly with its current placement on your lawnmower, but it can be beneficial for cleaning purposes. If you choose not to do this step make sure that the next few steps are done very carefully so as not to damage anything or cause any injuries.
- To remove the carburetors, the tank must usually be dismantled.
- If there is enough space for the rear of the air filter box, it can remain mounted.
- Drain float chambers (via drain screws).
- Screw-in upper throttle cable adjuster on throttle grip completely, so that the throttle cables have plenty of play. Open throttle grip, remove throttle cable nipples from their mountings.
- At the bottom of the carburetor battery: Remove the nipples of the throttle cable ends from their sockets in the cable pulley, unhook the throttle cables.
- Unhook choke cable (if present): Unhook first at the abutment, pull a little, and unhook the nipple.
- Loosen carburetor side clamps of the intake manifold by a few turns.
- Pull carburetor battery out of intake manifold and remove.
- Plug open-intake manifolds on cylinder head with clean rags to prevent dirt from entering the engine.
Disassemble Carburetor and Clean
- Unscrew the fastening screws of the float chamber, remove the float chamber. In most cases, the seal between the float chamber and the carburetor is stuck: tap the float chamber lightly with the handle of a medium-sized screwdriver to loosen the sticking.
- Pull out the retaining axle of the float with pliers or carefully (very carefully!) remove it from its press fit in the base with a small pin punch and gentle hammer blows and pull it out, remove the float with the attached float valve.
- Unscrew or pull out the main nozzle, needle nozzle, nozzle assembly, and idling nozzle.
- Unscrew mixture control screw and gas slide stop screw (if present). If an O-ring is inserted in the bore of the mixture control screw: Loosen with a small dental hook and pull out (lead photo). Insert new O-ring when reassembling!
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Tip: compressed air is good for removing dirt particles in the carburetor and accelerator pump nozzle assembly. Spray with oil if you remove an O-ring from its bore to prevent sticking when reassembling!
Lubricate all moving parts (needle valve/float needle) with oil before reassembly (if possible). The best lubricant would be a general-purpose grease like lithium grease but only very small amounts are necessary; too much will make it harder to clean during the next disassembly. Use a spray can of WD40 or similar on rubber / plastic parts instead.
