I have a little plastic Homelite 2-stroke powered pump that I use to pull water out of the stream to water the garden when it gets dry. Had it for years, a little slow but works good.
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Hauled it out Tuesday as things were getting dusty and spent an hour trying to get the little bastige to start. Never had a serious problem with starting before. Checked spark and compression (90-100 psi) and even gave it a whiff of Start Damn Ya. Nada.
Figured it was 20 plus years old and didn't owe me much so while I was in town yesterday I stopped by Horror Fright and bought a new one. Somewhat larger and a good deal heavier with a 4 stroke Predator engine. Set it up last evening after it cooled off and pumped a couple of 30 gallon plastic barrels worth of water and watered my tomatoes.
Got curious this morning and tore the old one completely apart without spotting anything obvious wrong. There were a couple of "that's odd..." things like the fuel pooling in the bottom of the cylinder around the crank, some dampness at the bottom of the crank cover gasket and some carbon staining on the bottom edge of the muffler gasket. Even took the muffler apart to make sure the spark arrester screen wasn't plugged. A little carboned up but didn't look like enough to keep it from running.
Sandblasted the muffler parts and reassembled everything, snugging up the jug-to-crankcase screws, the crank cover screws and the muffler bolts.
Throttle to half, choke on, farted on second pull, choke off, started and ran perfectly on the third pull. I guess something was loose enough to cause an air leak and either lean out the mixture too much or drop the compression low enough to keep it from firing.
So now I have two functional pumps. Not that that's a bad thing.
Oh, and we got 8 tenths of rain this morning...
