Recent content by Smithsonite

I'm betting on a fuel cap vent with asthma.

Only other thing if not carbon would be a piece of head gasket not machined correctly, sticking into the combustion chamber and glowing red. Actually one more thing. Wrong type of spark plug with the wrong heat range. If a projected resistor plug were to get hot enough it could definitely cause...

It also has MANY modifications. Carb mods, reeds, porting, pipes, higher compression, different pistons, crank balanced, etc.. I got the squish set within .001" of where I wanted it, and run the timing advanced farther than anyone else with the same bike dares. Runs absolutely perfect. I figure...

My RD350 consistently gets 38 MPG. I spent a LOT of time tuning.

They are the simplest, lightest, cheapest, and most powerful engines for their size. Zero downsides in my eyes. As a mechanic, I wish everything I owned was a 2-stroke, even the cars and truck! A V8 2-stroke would be an absolute powerhouse.

Really subjective, since it depends entirely on how the equipment was cared for. That said, as a lifelong mechanic, my 2-strokes last many times longer than the internet would have you believe. I can tune them by ear (whether it's a chainsaw or string trimmer, or a dirt bike / ATV or my...

After 14 years running a shop doing small engines and auto repair (mostly automotive towards the end), I quit AND got rid of all my modern junk vehicles. Whelp ... looks like this site doesn't like my pics either. (n) Replaced a '07 Silverado 1500 I bought brand new with a '93 Ram W250 with a...

Yep, I've seen that as well. Marketers years back always pushed that stuff as "ethanol resistant fuel line" - stuff was absolute garbage! I ended up doing my own research, and testing as it happened. Found Tygothane / Versilon clear hose in formulation C-210-A to be the best, truly...

Do it, or don't do it. Only matters to YOU. The first time you need the equipment and it won't start, and now instead of working on you or the customer's lawn you're tearing into a carburetor and fuel system for a cleaning, THEN you'll want to use E0. :) Another thing I've learned. Heat...

I ran a small engine shop for 14 years. 95% of my business was cleaning carburetors gummed up, corroded and / or destroyed from ethanol. My customers would say you're dead wrong with that opinion.

If you are near or in a state that sells E0 at the pump, that's the way to go. It's high $4 a gallon around here in NY, NH, VT, and ME.

Over 14 years of repairing small engines, I've found you can get away with using pump gas (E10) if you use the equipment often. If it sits for months, that's when problems start. I've also found draining a diaphragm carburetor of fuel ends up causing more issues than it helps. You're actually...

Only time I had ever seen something like this happen was on a Craftsman lawn tractor in the late 80's - it was fairly new at the time, so guessing a '87-'88 model. Think it had a Briggs, but that was 10's of thousands of gallons of beer, whiskey, rum, gin, and who-knows-what-else, ago ... the...

Some machines have a compression release on the intake cam, deactivated once over 300 RPM or so by flyweights.

These days it's a fools game to be brand loyal. Everything has been on a race to the bottom the past 20+ years. You have to take what's good at that moment. I owned an auto repair / small engine repair shop for 14 years. I've come to the conclusion that if you got ANYTHING good today -...