POOR SHORT TERM MEMORY

I was dragging the pasture, to level mole mounds, and break up the cow patties, yesterday, and the CA started running poor, like starving for gas. I nursed it back to the shop, and found rust in the sediment bowl. I cleaned the bowl, and removed the carb. I tore the carb (ZENETH) apart, stripped it down to cast iron, and dropped it in the card cleaner bucket, to soak till this morning. I pulled it out of the cleaner this morning, rodded the passages out, with my torch tool, blew it out with air, and started reasembly. I had a brass jet left over on the bench, and couldn't figgure out where I took it out at. I seperated the halves again, and looked it over carefully, but after an hour I still couldn't figgure it out! I went in to the computer, and looked for a PDF breakdown of the carb, but couldn't find one. I had lunch, drank coffee, and generaly dreaded going back to the project.Back at the bench I spotted a hex plug on the bowl bottom, that I had removed to soak it. I turned it up removed the plug, and then It dawned on me that I had removed the jet, from inside that passage. I screwed it in , reassembled the carb, put the carb back on the tractor, and it ran fine, BUT I didn't have much day left to go back to the dragging. There is not much get's by me!

Thanks for telling that story on yourself. It makes me feel better.

Early last winter, over at the church, the Tecumseh engine on a used, almost like new, recent model snow blower, wasn't running right. Obviously a carb problem. I was able to round barely enough tools together to get the csrb apart and opened up. Mostly it was just full of rusty dirt from dirty gas. So, having nothing else at hand, I took it to a bathroom hot water faucet in a lavatory to wash it out. As I was washing I just got a flashing glimpse of a little red plastic piece going down the drain - maybe soda-straw size, less than 1/4" long. I took the trap off the drain but it had gone on by. I checked internet pdf drawings, checked with a local small engine repair shop and could find no evidence of the presence of any little red plastic part supposed to be in there. I put the carb and engine back together without the missing little red plastic part and it run fine. Even idles nice. A winter and a half later and it still runs really well. Go figure!

I picked up a JD H about 35 years ago, my first tractor for $200 (nobody wanted them back then). The first time I changed oil, two steel balls clanked into the drain pan. Some years later I tore it all apart and found a couple of broken piston rings and a pin for the governor flyweights, with the cotters in both ends, in the bottom of the crankcase. Never did figure out where the balls came from.