There are so many possibilities. Of course I think that you have a carb issue and your not going to solve it with chemicals after the fact. But other crap happens. My snowblower wouldn't start after a summer off and I'm like UGH WTF. I hate doing carbs. But as I started to dig into it mice had decided the intake track was a good home.
Fuel+air+spark.
Starting fluid and if it fires and won't run carb.
If it doesn't fire at all something more fundemental...

If it runs with starting fluid but not on the carb then there’s bad fuel and or sludge in the carb passages. Happened to my lawnmower when it was filled with bad has I pulled out of a tank that sat for 10 years. Yeah. Drain and clean the bowl with spray carb cleaner. Next remove carb and spray cleaner into the throat and with the provided straw, spray out the little passages. Then chase the passages with starting fluid. Install carb and while cranking, squirt just enough starting fluid in the carb to keep the engine running. It will quickly start running on the fresh gas. That’s what I do.

It's possible that if it was ethanol based gas (87 oct) that some of the seals in the carb or fuel pump might be shot. Should be easy to replace.

What happens when you leave gas in the tank with a gravity fed carb without shutting off the fuel valve?

1. Gasoline flows into the float bowl until the float rises enough that the needle valve shuts off the flow of gasoline.
2. The gasoline in the float bowl starts to evaporate because the carb is vented.
3. The float lowers.
Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 until gas remains in the tank.

What you wind up with is a gummed up float bowl and main-jet. That gummed up main-jet cannot be cleaned by spraying anything into the air intake. You have to pull the float bowl to get at the main-jet and clean the float bowl. I’d pull the carb because it’s easier to get at the main-jet with carb cleaner and compressed air when you can flip the carb over. You may have to poke a piece of copper wire through the hole in the main-jet which is brass. The copper shouldn’t damage the brass.

Putting stuff in the gas tank won’t fix it either because that stuff will not reach the main-jet.

These gravity fed small engine carbs are really simple. Gas goes from the tank trough the needle seat into the float bowl. The gas in the float bowl goes up a tube whose one end is at the bottom of the float bowl, through the main-jet, to the other end of the tune where it gets atomized into the air thats getting sucked into the engine. That’s it. That’s the path the gas takes to get to the engine. The one exception is if the carb has a priming bulb. The priming bulb forces gas through a different circuit.

Motorcycle carbs are more complicated. They’ll have idle-jets, main-jets, metering-jets and needles. Small engines carbs with fuel pumps will be more complicated as well. The ones on outboard motors like my 1983 9.9hp Honda four-stroke, for example. That one is a real pain with multiple tiny passages for gas to flow.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
I've used starting fluid to encourage small engines to crank after sitting up . Worth a try .

I'll give that a shot. No harm in trying that.

I had the same problem with a lawnmower I inherited. I pulled the carb, desludged it with a can of spray carb cleaner (old ethanol gasoline had sludged the carb), put in fresh gas, shot some starter fluid into the carb, and it fired up and ran like a champ. When you drained the old gas, if you put it in a glass jar it will be orange colored instead of clear to light green, the orange color is the color or old gas that has absorbed a ton of water from the air and degraded over time. Nasty. Going forward, don't store with ethanol gas, and start using "Rec 90", aka Recreation 90 octane gasoline, which has zero ethanol. You can get it from any Marina, which is what boaters use.

Probably just a good disassembly and carb cleaning. Or... a new carb on Amazon for around 20 bucks, 10 minutes to swap it out and it'll run like a top.

When I had trouble with starting engines like you had, I would hit/tap the carburetor with a rubber mallet. A couple of pulls and it would start. This would break free any stuck floats. This was done on old engines though.

I bought an Ariens snow blower several years ago that was basically the same situation. The previous owner had let it sit for several years with gas in it so it wasn’t much better than water at that point. The piston wasn’t locked up so I bought it and took it home. I removed the float bowl, gave the assembly a good spraying out with carb cleaner, and drained the old gas. After adding fresh gas it fired up on the second pull.

Thanks for the input everyone! I've got a some good suggestions. I'll take off work a bit early today and start with the easiest and move up the ladder. Hopefully a soak overnight in clean gas with carb cleaner mixed in will do the trick. Again, thanks all.

If it was my snowblower I would pull the carb off and put in a pot of rapidly boiling water for 30 minutes. Make sure to rotate it around occasionally.
Afterwards use an air compressor it blow it out.
Reinstall and give it a short or 2 of ether.

Works plus 95% of time for me.

So you now have two full pages of the same advice . I wish you well ..

Once you get it going again, go buy a gas can and mark it for ethanol free gas only and only get and use that from now on.

I'll admit to not reading every word of this thread, but I didn't see this mentioned.

Another cause of failure to get gas to the combustion chamber is an air leak somewhere in the circuit. Usually this is because a soft fuel line has rotted of hardened and developed a split, but fittings can also leak. When you are tearing apart your fuel system, keep an eye out dor this as well.

A little over a year ago I had to disassemble and clean and/or rebuild/replace all the carbs for my 3 gas powered implements.

I got recreational gas from a local station, filled my two tanks (straight gas and 2-cycle mix) with fuel stabilizer on the straight gas (2-cycle oil has stablizer in it).

They all ran OK and I made sure to turn off the fuel valve and run the mower dry.

Reminds me I should check the snow blower to see if it's ok...

Update: A new plug, letting it sit overnight with fresh ethanol free gas mixed with carb cleaner, and a bit of starting fluid got it going. It starts pretty easy now that I've let it run awhile. FYI, when it warms up a bit I'll either rebuild or replace the carb. Thanks for the advice everyone. Sig Forum rocks!

^^^
Good news! It's below freezing here in the daytime, so (like you) anything that'll require disassembly/fiddling is going to have wait a few months.

I just had to replace a 17 y.o. needle valve in my Toro sing stage blower.
$14.00

They are charging $80 per hour to fix'em these days .

(They didn't get it from me)

A snowblower isn't operated in a dirty environment like lawn/garden equipment, but check the air filter anyway, if for no other reason than to check for a "mouse house" in it.

I don't think any type of liquid magic is going to make the snowblower run. Price out a new carb as sometimes they're very cheap for these engines.....Otherwise you're going to need to take the carb apart and soak it 24 hours in carb cleaner and then clean all of the jets and put a rebuild kit in it.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
I don't think any type of liquid magic is going to make the snowblower run.

You might want to read the "update".