Doing Your Own 2-Cycle Carburetor Tune-up

 If you've ever owned a piece of lawn equipment with a 2-cycle gasoline engine – a blower, weed-whacker, or chain saw, for instance – you probably already know that the things are finicky about their fuel. Sometimes getting them started can turn even the mildest-mannered suburban dad into a raving maniac. Trust me; I know: I've been known to say on more than one occasion that I will never buy a gasoline-powered weed-whacker again. That was, however, before I bought my own Carburetor Adjustment Tool Kit.

In my experience, the two most common fuel problems with 2-cycle carbs are varnish in the fuel and a carb that is out of adjustment. If you're lucky, you can clean out the varnish with additives, but the adjustment? That almost always requires a special tool, and the tool differs from carburetor brand to brand (Zama, Walbro, etc.). You almost always have two little pegs sticking up from the carburetor housing (see image, above left), but the shape of the tool can be one of nine or ten different configurations. This kit contains nine of them, fitting (almost) all carbs – apparently some Walbro carbs have a 22-tooth spline instead of 21-tooth. Go figure.

You can find instructions on YouTube for tuning a carburetor; in short you adjust the mixture (ratio of fuel to air) and then adjust the idle speed to keep the engine from dying at idle. Without these little tools, however, you're at the mercy of your local small-engine repair guy.

If you, like me; have cleaned the carb and air filter, added fresh fuel, and changed the spark plug but the cussed thing still won't start and keep running, a ten-dollar investment may be just the thing you need. All these kits are pretty much the same (nine different configurations), so don't get hung up on the brand. I actually bought mine at the local BigBox store (Menard's), and it's precisely the same.

copyright © 2021 scmrak

San Angelo Bar

They Won't Sell You a Beer at This San Angelo Bar!

Although their name sounds more like somewhere you might catch a Los Lonely Boys¹ gig of a Saturday Night, San Angelo bars are pretty much as far from beer halls as you can imagine. Sometimes called a "rock bar" (also a venue where you might see Los Lonely Boys play, I guess), a San Angelo bar is essentially a seventeen-pound steel pencil. You can't buy a drink at one and you most likely won't hear any music, but when it comes to prying out a rock or busting through a hard streak when you're digging a post hole, you sure can't beat one.

Post holes are exactly why I have one - digging new holes and busting the cement out of old ones. I’m talking situations like a recent fence repair, courtesy of a 60-mph wind and a string of rotten, 20-year-old posts…. not to mention 95-degree heat.

Mine is the classic San Angelo bar design manufactured by Ludell Tool. A drop-forged steel bar with a one-inch hexagonal cross-section, it's seventy inches long and came painted with dark green enamel (newer bars are black). One end is pointed, as if the bar had been plugged into a super-sized (and super-tough) pencil sharpener. The opposite end is flattened into a dull chisel point 2½" wide. All told, it weighs seventeen pounds. Because it’s long and solid, a San Angelo bar is perfect for prying loose a heavy rock you encounter when digging. The pointy end can pierce dense, hard layers of soil, which is especially useful for digging post holes. Seventeen pounds of hardened steel launched two or three feet onto that point does a fine job on tough soil layers: a former neighbor once punched through what he thought was rock with his rock bar only to realize he'd poked a hole in the top of his septic tank!