Last year, as I was cleaning my driveway off with my snowblower and it
up and quit. I couldn't get it started again so I took it to the
small engine shop. The service manager told me the carb in my
snowblower was plugged. $50 or so later, I got it back and ran it the
rest of the snow season. After the season was over, I ran it out of
gas so the carb was supposedly dry. This year, I got it out, filled
it up, and tried to start it again. Again it wouldn't start. I pulled
the spark plug (which looked good) and put some gas down the
cylinder. It started, then died. I pulled the bowl off of the carb.
There was a screen that came off of the inlet tube. The screen had
some black gooey gunk in it. I cleaned the gunk out of the screen.
Then I unscrewed what I would call a jet out of the inlet tube. It
was completely plugged. I used a pin and cleaned the jet out. I put
it back together and started it. It started very easily on full
choke. I let it warm up a few minutes then took it off of choke. The
engine then started to surge. It would drop in rpm, then pick back
up, then drop off again. When I applied the paddles, it seemed to run
better. It will be good enough for this snow season, but I have a
coulple of questions:

Is there more that I have to clean out?
Where did the gunk/sludge come from? Would it have come from the
hose?. The fuel and fuel tank is clean as far as I can tell and has a
fuel filter as well.

Thanks.