JD LX178 lawn mower

I have a John Deere lx178 lawn tractor/mower/whatever
I have had a love/hate relationship for two years. Would run for an hour and job done.
next time would run for 15 minutes and nothing. Turned out to be dirt in fuel system which was
caused by a bad diaphragm in the fuel pump (I had cleaned everything else in the meantime)
new pump works great. fuel is clean. I can not get the carb to keep from spilling out from the overflow
tube. I have had carb out and cleaned and adjusted six times. Still the same. HELP please.
 
Without knowing exactly which engine is in that model, the best I can tell you is the needle valve is not sealing off the fuel flow for whatever reason. It could be the float leaking, but I am thinking the engine has a plastic float which usually does not give that problem.
it could be corrosion on the seat the needle goes into or a problem with the tip of the needle itself.

If the needle seats in a plastic piece which also supports the float, the o-ring above it may be leaking and allowing fuel to completely bypass the needle valve.
 
Carb has been off sis times. new needle valve,I think they gave me the wrong one, but it is
supposed to be correct. Plastic float not leaking seat has been cleaned and polished.
Could the fuel pump have too much pressure? Float is as old as the machine.
It has a Kawasaki 15 horse liquid cooled motor that I really like.
 
I hope I do not sound like a fool here, but I might. I once had a carb that puked fuel out everywhere. This was after I had disassembled the carb and cleaned it. Turns out I had reinstalled the float upside down. This may not even be possible on your carb, but it was on mine, and I managed to do it.
 
I have one of those mowers. I had to change the fuel pump as it was leaking and not keeping the bowl full.
when I took the carb apart I had to. be very careful with the bowl gasket. It is small and very easy to get out of place and leak as a result. You may need a new one. Also, I don't remember if that carb had a removable needle seat or not. You might want to check on that. I have accidently blown some out with compressed air before.
 
Just went through that same thing with one of my LX178's. Cleaned carb first, still had gas running out, bad fuel pump. New pump, then carb leaked gas again. The carb on mine has a spring loaded leeeeetle tiny needle and the smallest particle makes it leak. Took it off and cleaned it again, success! Starts on the first turnover with no choke, and that's rare on a Kawasaki engine, at least on mine. I really like the LX178, 188, 279's. Great tractors that will run forever with a little care.
 
I don't think they would have too much pressure. There's really not much you can do to goof up anything inside there. Float's non-adjustable and solid plastic, never saw a bad one. Can't imagine it would help, but you might take a Q-tip and with the tinyest amount of metal polish, try and polish the seat and then clean it up. That has to be fruatrating as those are not the eastiest to get off and on with the linkage to the governor (that rotten little spring that goes around the rod) and all. Good luck. Let up know how you come out.
Irv
 

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