Carburetor blues

I'm glad our car and truck both have fuel injection. Carburetors are nothing but trouble. If you have an engine with a carburetor, and won't run, or won't run right, chances are it's the carburetor. When I bought my Silver Eagle, it came with two spare carbs. I should have seen that as a bad sign. Sure enough, the worst problems I've had were carburetor problems.

I have four Cushmans with complete and running(sometimes) Husky engines. The older ones use the Tillotson ML carb and the newer ones use the MT. It's very hard to read the model numbers on these carbs when they are on the scooter, so I have learned to look at the shape of the float chamber.

Speaking of floats, I have pretty much determined that the leaky MT on my 60-series has a stuck float. Either that, or the float has a hole in it. So this afternoon, for the umpteenth time, I'm going to yank the body off and see if I can get the top off the bowl without removing the carb from the engine.

I used to have an old Snapper lawn mower with an 8 hp B&S engine. The float valve would stick and it would drain all of the gas down into the crankcase. Getting the valve out and cleaning it up would fix the problem, but then I had to change the diluted oil. I suppose the inside of the crankcase was reasonably clean after that. I wish I had a dime for everytime that happened. I hated to part with that old mower, but that carb was good riddence.

Next, I'm going to complain about ignition systems.
Howard