Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

[bitter]

i get home from work and my step mom tells me "well i was mowing and it ran out of gas, i filled it back up, topped up the oil, but then it wont start" so i go out and take a look...looks fine, nothing OBVIOUSLY wrong with it. it has spark and fuel...but its pulling too easy. no compression, this is bad as i just put on a new head gasket.

 

so i pull it around front and pull the shroud and head. the intake valve is open. i spin the crank...it stays open. i think "f@$k bent valve f@$k f@$k f@$k" so i spin the valve....it spins true...wtf, not bent?....ok, maybe its just stuck? so i tap it with a screw driver hand.e. doesnt go back down....i'm getting a lil confused....so i pry it up with the blade of the screw driver...

 

 

out falls a tiny screw, about 2 milimeters long and about one wide with an inset hex head. :) it was jamming the valve open preventing compression.

 

 

HOW THE HELL DID IT GET IN THERE???!!! the air filter was on the whole time she was mowing. i'm thinking it HAD to have come loose from in the carb. so i need to pull that apart tomorrow and look for where it came from. but i have a good idea. i think its the screw that holds the butterfly to the shaft. :)

[Super Jamie]

wow, unlucky. they're usually splayed at the end so you can't undo them if you try. every throttle plate screw i've ever tried to undo has usually broken off in half

[bitter]

wow, unlucky. they're usually splayed at the end so you can't undo them if you try. every throttle plate screw i've ever tried to undo has usually broken off in half

now that i look at it, the screw has a point....any screw in the carb isnt pointed like that as far as i know. so now I'm f@$king stumped. i'll mess with it more tomorrow. but now i will take a look into the carb to see if thats the screw. another thing is that i don't think that the throttle plate screw is torx pan head. i'm confused as hell! :)

[Super Jamie]

i've seen some throttle plate screws hex head, i've read that torx bolts are a higher tensile bolt than gr8.8, so it would make sense

 

however i've never seen a pointed end screw in a carb either, tho i'm used to working on car carbies, not lawnmower ones, which are pretty wierd looking to me :) perhaps it slipped in by accident when you did the head gasket not so long ago?

[bitter]

its been a while since i was in my small engines class. that screw did come from the throttle plate. wtf indeed. i'm starting to think that the guy on the assembly line that torques everything down on the engines was taking a piss break when this one rolled past. 1st my head bolts were loose, now this!