My Hornet 600 only gets used for about two thirds of the year, and having owned it from new in 1998 I am by now very conversant with putting it to bed for the winter with whatever fuel happens to be in the tank. Come the spring, and with battery having been kept charged with an Optimate, it's just a matter of cranking the engine for a few seconds until the float chambers fill, then off we go to the fuel station to tank up and thereby dilute the old fuel. Nine years on, the motor is still in perfect rude health and pulls hard, so I very much doubt gummed up carbs. Gummy, yes, probably, but not gummed up and I'm certainly not about to fiddle with something that works so well.
At the other end of the engineering scale, I have just purchased a lawnmower powered by the Mountfield RV150 engine, and it makes quite clear in the handbook that the fuel tank and carb should be emptied of fuel if the mower won't be used for 30 days or more. Today, using it for the first time, I brimmed the tank to the limit of the filling neck to get a rough idea of how often I will need to fill up and found that 30 minutes mowing dropped the fuel level by the height of that filler neck, that's all! At that rate a tank of fuel will last nearly a season!
So, do I add a fuel stabiliser Like THe late Growler did in his genny (www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=15...3
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or adopt the same attitude that I successfully did with the Hornet?
My thread is prompted by this brand new mower starting cleanly on absolutely the first gentle pull of the cord after filling with fuel. I was astonished; no spluttering, just pull, vroom. Each subsequent hot start was just as easy. Having watched Dad huff and puff (Pull, d-d-d-donk. Pull, d-d-d-donk. Etc, etc!) and buy goddness knows how many carburettor overhaul kits for his Briggs & Stratton powered Mountfield, this is a characteristic I wish to retain!
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I don't bother about emptying the tank at the end of the season. If my Briggs and Stratton engined Mountfield HP470 doesn't start first pull after not being used over the winter, all I do is spray Bradex Easy Start over the air filter inlet. Then it starts, no probs.
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L\'escargot.
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I use fuel stabiliser - I mix a batch in a petrol can towards the end of the season and use it for the last fills of bike and lawnmower. Never had a gummed-up carb yet.
PS. I loved my Hornet 600. I swapped it for a Fazer 600 which is the sensible choice given I'm doing more motorway miles but the Fazer doesn't make me feel as good as the Hornet did!
www.frost.co.uk/item_Detail.asp?productID=8233&fro...0(473ml,%20US%20Pint)
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I use fuel stabiliser ..........
How does a fuel stabiliser stop the lighter more volatile fractions of the petrol from evaporating over the winter? That's the thing which causes starting problems.
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L\'escargot.
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Thanks, Marlot.
Thinking since starting this thread, with the benefit of a brand new machine I think I will try some fuel stabiliser anyway. I have nothing to lose.
Glad you liked your Hornet. As you will gather, to still have it after nine years I love mine. I've done a fair few holidays on it, the next being to the South of France in mid June (with a Fazer FZ6 in the group as it happens). Can't wait. I solved the wind blast problem by fitting a very stylish half fairing made by the antiseptic sounding Spanish company "TCP". Beautifully made to OEM standard, and painted with the correct Honda Tahiti Blue paint, it looks infinitely more stylish than the ghastly fairing fitted to the otherwise gorgeous Hornet 600 S, and pushes the comfortable long distance cruising speed up from seventy to just shy of the ton.
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I don't bother about emptying the tank at the end of the season. If my Briggs and Stratton engined Mountfield HP470 doesn't start first pull after not being used over the winter all I do is spray Bradex Easy Start over the air filter inlet. Then it starts no probs.
Hopefully this means that your old problem is sorted:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=21728&...#
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Hopefully this means that your old problem is sorted: www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=21728&...#
Fancy you remembering that!
Yes it's sorted, but what it needed was a new diaphragm in the carburettor. The original had pulled out from between the multi-chambered clamping faces at one point and was leaking from one chamber to another. The repair agent said he'd actually seen brand new Briggs and Stratton engines which needed a new diaphragm. I looked at the design with a professional eye and concluded that the metal parts were insufficiently rigid to give reliable clamping of all the various very narrow sealing lands of the diaphragm, and the width of the sealing lands were too narrow to give reliable alignment. It certainly put me off Briggs and Stratton engines.
Incidentally, I noted recently in B&Q that Mountfield mowers now have engines which purport to be manufactured by Mountfield, not B&S as formerly was the case.
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L\'escargot.
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Fancy you remembering that!
;-) I actually have a head full of such clutter (which colleagues frequently exploit when they can't remember something). Somehow I do this naturally, along with remembering phone numbers, car registration plates, and other strings of digits without even realising, yet have to work to remember people's names (make an association and repeat the name out loud).
Your B&Q comment is correct; all the Mountfield's I saw in B&Q had Mountfield RV150 engines. I didn't buy one however, and instead chose a MacAllister branded mower only sold in B&Q. Why? It is absolutely identical to the Mountfield it is based on in all bar colour (blue instead of red), a cosmetic moulding on the otherwise identical cutter deck pressing, the hub cap design on the wheels, rigid grassbag lower instead of fabric, and adjusting cutter height at each wheel individually (dead easy with lever and big detents) instead of pulling one lever.
It sells at £119 instead of £179 normal price for the Mountfield or current B&Q price of £139. The EU plate shows it came from the same Italian factory as the Mountfield, but bizarrely, B&Q give it a 3 year warranty instead of the 2 you get if you buy a Mountfield, and it is Mountfield not B&Q who you contact if you need to call on the warranty!
Add all this up, and unfortunately it meant the excellent garden tool shop (Sims in Stratford-upon-Avon) that I try to give my trade to, lost out this time; £60 saving and a year's extra warranty by going to B&Q.
On the subject of easy starting, the web is awash with comments that the RV150 starts much more readily than the ubiquitous Briggs & Stratton equivalent.
Finally, I smiled when I read of the reason for your Briggs & Stratton problem; diaphragms were the usual reason for Dad to be stripping down the carburettor on his Briggs & stratton powered mower I described the huffing and puffing for above. Fifteen years on from the last time I helped do this job, I can still mentally draw a picture of what the diaphragm looks like, having seen so many of them!
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I use the Frost's stuff too, and it really does work. I think it contains ethyl nitrates, as this is what it smells like.
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