My Scag quit running after 10.8 hours

[jekjr]

Hello All,

A few months ago, I purchased a Cheetah. I haven't used it much as it only has 10.8 hours on it. I was mowing a few days ago and it started mis-firing and then quit.

I checked for fire: Good.
I checked for fuel: Good.
I checked the air filter: Good.
I put a squirt of fuel in the carb and spun the starter: NO GOOD!!!

So, with nothing else left to do, I pulled the plugs and they looked awful. Dark black everywhere.

I put new plugs in and it took off running great.

So, I visited the local shop that I purchased the Cheetah at and the only idea that they could come up with was that since my back one acre is very bumpy, maybe I was bouncing the carburetor float around and the fuel/air ratio was pooched. I don't know about that one. Also, I typically run it at full throttle.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
John

Did you over fill it with fuel? That might possibly be your problem if you did. You only fill it to the bottom of the white inserts in the tanks NOT TO THE TOP. If you do it will cause you problems and that might quite possibly be the cause of your problem.

 

[texasvet]

Oh yeah!!! The first thing I did was put more fuel in it because my gas gauge was near E and I thought that maybe it was not reading right.

I wish that I had first looked at my spark plugs instead of checking for fuel. But then, adding some fuel is easy and who would've ever thought that after 10.8 hours the plugs would be gummed up.

I'll post again in a month after I put five or 10 hours on those new plugs and let ya'll know how things are going.

Tv

 

[55TBird]

My new Turf Tiger II was running great and then at 14 hours it died as if it ran out of fuel. Took it to the Scag dealer and it turned out that I had bought some badly contaminated gas. (I started a thread on this subject)
The fuel filter was almost solid with this whitish/pinkish stuff and the gas tank was loaded with it. I discovered the contaminate in my fuel cans and so far seems to have come originally from the gas station tanks.
The dealer has had to remove the gas tank and it has been in the shop 4 days now.

Anyway, I tend to think fresh gas is good gas but turns out I'm very wrong about that. And the fuel filter is one of the easiest things to check when there is a fuel issue. When a new mower won't run, fuel should be a prime suspect.

By the way, I asked the dealer about the over-filling issue that jekjr mentioned....and they said you'd need to really fill it to the top. There apparently is a valve that keeps fuel from running back into that canister when the mower is on an angle like a hill and that it isn't likely to cause a problem unless you really fill it up to the gas cap.

 

[jekjr]

My new Turf Tiger II was running great and then at 14 hours it died as if it ran out of fuel. Took it to the Scag dealer and it turned out that I had bought some badly contaminated gas. (I started a thread on this subject)
The fuel filter was almost solid with this whitish/pinkish stuff and the gas tank was loaded with it. I discovered the contaminate in my fuel cans and so far seems to have come originally from the gas station tanks.
The dealer has had to remove the gas tank and it has been in the shop 4 days now.

Anyway, I tend to think fresh gas is good gas but turns out I'm very wrong about that. And the fuel filter is one of the easiest things to check when there is a fuel issue. When a new mower won't run, fuel should be a prime suspect.

By the way, I asked the dealer about the over-filling issue that jekjr mentioned....and they said you'd need to really fill it to the top. There apparently is a valve that keeps fuel from running back into that canister when the mower is on an angle like a hill and that it isn't likely to cause a problem unless you really fill it up to the gas cap.

From everything I read the white inserts that are in the tanks are there as indicators of how much fuel to put in them.

 

[55TBird]

From everything I read the white inserts that are in the tanks are there as indicators of how much fuel to put in them.

Yes, that is what they told me when I bought it, so naturally I worried that I had filled it up just beyond the bottom of the plastic. And then I saw your post which made me think that may indeed be what happened.
I asked the dealer if that was what could be the problem and that's when they told me about the valve that stops the gas from running back up into the hose from just the angle of the mower. They said I would have to fill it all the way up to the top for it to actually cause a problem. If that happened easily — that would be a major design flaw, but they assured me that was unlikely to be the issue. Once they took a good look at it they found it was full of that stuff.