If your spark plug is wet then fuel starvation is not the problem . Have you
tried a new plug. The old one may be breaking down. In any case it sounds to
me like loss of spark for whatever reason.
wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi all...
Hoping that someone could point me in the right direction.

My parents' Toro gas lawnmower doesn't want to operate.... it will
start running but dies within a second.
I checked the float in the carb and it works just fine, the needle
valve is not stuck and the reservoir has plenty of gas in it.
The engine will only start if I prime it about 5 or so times, if I try
to start the motor without priming it - it won't budge.
I tried different plugs to no avail. However, I noticed that once the
motor starts and dies, the plug is wet, which tells me that the mixure
is too rich.

Couple of questions at this point:
- what does the prime button do? Does it only fill up the float
chamber with gas? Or does it also pump some gas into the engine for
quicker starts?
- do lawnmower carbs have an adjustment somewhere where I can reduce
the amount of gas sucked into the combustion chamber?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Alex