Surprise Fuel Leak!
- Thread starter l008com
- Start date
l008com
Well-Known Member
Welp, more problems, which is the way these things always seem to go.
I just spent half an hour trying to install the new needle seat. It looks like it goes in right. But when I reassemble the float, the float hangs down so low you can't even put the bowl back on.
Here it is with the new seat "installed"
So I take the seat back out and look in the hole. It does KIND of look like theres some kind of scraped metal along the seating surface. BUT when I feel around with the end of an allen wrench, you can barely even feel it at all. And it might be some kind of optical illusion, I have to do a very high optical zoom to even see it, so its very blurry and the whole thing might just be a digital artifact or something. It certainly does not look or feel like its something big enough to be preventing the float from even clearing the bowl.
Any thoughts? It FEEL like the problem is that the seat is way too thick. But when you look at it, clearly it is not.
Edit: Also yes, the new needle is identical to the old one, same exact shape and size. It also feels like you would expect if you put a new needle in there that was about 1/8" too long or something.
I just spent half an hour trying to install the new needle seat. It looks like it goes in right. But when I reassemble the float, the float hangs down so low you can't even put the bowl back on.
Here it is with the new seat "installed"
So I take the seat back out and look in the hole. It does KIND of look like theres some kind of scraped metal along the seating surface. BUT when I feel around with the end of an allen wrench, you can barely even feel it at all. And it might be some kind of optical illusion, I have to do a very high optical zoom to even see it, so its very blurry and the whole thing might just be a digital artifact or something. It certainly does not look or feel like its something big enough to be preventing the float from even clearing the bowl.
Any thoughts? It FEEL like the problem is that the seat is way too thick. But when you look at it, clearly it is not.
Edit: Also yes, the new needle is identical to the old one, same exact shape and size. It also feels like you would expect if you put a new needle in there that was about 1/8" too long or something.
Last edited:
l008com
Well-Known Member
So reddit told me to just get a new carb. Given that, I figured I might as well see what I can do, since worst case is I'd still need a new carb. So I got a large drill bit, the largest one I could fit down in the hole. And I put a small vice grip on the end and started twisting it by hand. A little bit at a time, then put the seat back in and see how it closed. And little by little, it closed better and better. I didn't get it perfect, I didn't get it so the float closed perfectly horizontal, but it was pretty close and MUCH better than it was. It now moves inside the bowl, rather than the bowl pinching it down. So hopefully this actually works and the seal holds and it doesn't leak fuel through. We shall see.
l008com
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure if it worked or not. The carb did leak, but it stopped after a few minutes and didn't seem to start up again.
But the machine ran poorly, surging a lot. In the end, I just ordered a carb for it and hopefully that fixes it. Ironically, the carb was $10 and the needle seat was $13. So I should have just bought the carb in the first place for parts, and then when I decided to go with the full carb, I would have already had it! Oh well.
But the machine ran poorly, surging a lot. In the end, I just ordered a carb for it and hopefully that fixes it. Ironically, the carb was $10 and the needle seat was $13. So I should have just bought the carb in the first place for parts, and then when I decided to go with the full carb, I would have already had it! Oh well.