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My carb was dripping gas so I figured the float valve was stuck. It started running real crappy while we were heading back in a couple days ago. I had to keep tapping on the side of the carb to keep it running. I pulled the plugs and they were very sooty. I drained a lot of water out of the filter and tried it again. It started right up and ran ok, but the gas leak was much worse. The pipe under the spark arrestor was actually half full of gas, and gas was leaking out the choke shaft. I took the carb off the motor so I could look for crud making the valve stick. I noticed the gasket between the top and bottom halves was sticking out on the side closer to the block, but thought it must be one of those "fits more than one type" gaskets. I took the top half off, and was amazed to see that the gasket had been installed upside down! Except for the water in the gas problem, which we also had last season, the motor has been running pretty well. Now that the gasket is back on the right way, it runs much better! Putting the gasket on upside down appears to create a huge vacumn leak if I followed the path correctly. I'm amazed it would run at all. Now I'm wondering if the black soot on the plugs was caused by the gasket error or if I should look elsewhere to solve that problem. I did find some crud that might have been causing the float valve to stick open, and the leak seems to be fixed.
Jim
Jim
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