Amen to the clean out the carburetor suggestion. At the very least, run the
damned thing dry of fuel. I have a John Deere 5 horse I bought around '98
to replace a Tired Toro. Have used it sporadically, living in central Ohio.
Didn't need it for about 3 years (2 anyway), until last winter, when we got
about a foot. Put in new gas, wouldn't start. Would run for a spurt on
ether, then die. So I pulled the carb. Absolutely caked with the most
miserable dried on blue 2 cycle oil crud. Now I've cleaned quite a number of
filthy automotive carbs in my time, and gumout wouldn't even touch this
stuff. Got a bucket of carb dip at the auto parts store (after paying some
teenagers to shovel the drive) & soaked the damned thing for hours, blew all
the passages (or so I thought), looked fine. Put it all together, didn't
try it out until last week (didn't want to get more gas in there if I wasn't
going to use it for another year. Would run briefly on the primer bulb,
then die. Pulled the main jet at the bottom, it was STILL plugged. Had to
carefully work a toothpick & fine needle through the jet to open it up, then
spray with gumout, put it all back together & it started. This spring I'll
run it dry then remove the bowl & spray it all out with carb cleaner & let
it dry before reassembling.

BTW this machine has a 120V electric starter, only way to go IMHO. The hell
with that yanking a cord at 2 below!!! ;-)

Dan



"Klm" wrote in message
...
do is to change the spark plug, and in summer, give the carburetor a
good cleaning. Stick with the recommended gas-lube mix. Too much lube
fouls the spark plug.