New Carb Question on 15 year old 3.5 hp engine.

[Jeff T]

The Briggs engine is on a Little Wonder edger. Bought it last year, took it apart, cleaned, reassembled and still very hard to start.

Fast forward to this spring, it would not start. Premium, non ethanol gas and no Stabil. Checked for spark, OK. Dribbled a little gas into engine fired right up.

OK, that tells me fuel delivery is the problem. Ordered a $20 carb of Amazon, installed, started first pull. Only issue, no low idle. You move the lever to Slow and it just dies.

The new carb came with one piece that I removed so it looked just like the original. Should I reinstall the part I removed and or keep it the way it was originally?

 

[slomo]

1.You don't need premium fuel in a Briggs. Only has at most 8:1 compression. 87 octane is more than enough. No ethanol, yes.
2.Verify the choke is working. In my attached pic, the center of, THAT is the choke plate. Plate should close with the choke ON.


3.Put your OEM Briggs carb back on. Take that Chinese "Gambler Series" carb and toss it. Get the choke working on the OEM carb.
4.You should NEVER Harley Davidson like slow idle any splash lube engine. Don't worry about slow revs, it's not a car. 3200-3600 revs is all you need. Verify max revs in your engine manual.
5.Your gov/throttle linkage looks slightly bent. Like someone bent it removing the carb.
6.Also on the same linkage, is that a spring hanging down hooked to nothing? Think that is the gov/throttle return spring. It should parallel the throttle linkage exactly, same hole.

slomo