|
The idea is prove or disprove the theory that your carburetor is the culprit. The carburetor can fail in one of two ways: Either you're getting too much gas (flooding), or not enough gas (starvation). You haven't indicated that you're seeing symptoms of flooding (black smoke, gas running out the carb), so I'm assuming that you think fuel starvation is the problem. To test this out, give the air cleaner intake a snort of ether, then try to start. If fuel starvation is the problem, the tractor should fire right up, then start to die. When it starts to die, give it another snort of ether. If your carb is bad, you should be able to keep the tractor running on ether, but it will quit as soon as you stop feeding it the starting fluid. Go easy with the starting fluid; a little bit goes a long ways. Something to bear in mind is that it's rarely just one problem with these old tractors. A lot of times they will keep running (poorly) with all kinds of problems, but something minor will happen that will cause them to finally quit. When that happens, you may need to fix two or three things to get them running again. If it is a carburetor problem, these carbs are fairly simple to overhaul. A common problem is a pinhole leak in the float; shake the float and listen for fluid inside. If there's any gas inside the float, it has to be replaced.
|
