I have an ancient 2-cycle Lawn-Boy mower (model 7086) that uses gas/oil mixture. It doesn't run very smoothly anymore, and the spark plug fouls pretty easily/frequently.
The other day I shut the main gas line off and let it run until the carburetor bowl emptied and the engine died. But I noticed that in the middle of that process, the engine smoothed out real nice, and also sped up a bit. Well, I'm wonderinging if the bowl is filling up too much under normal operation, producing too rich a mixture. That could make sense if whatever shuts off the gas inflow as the float comes up has gotten old or compressed or whatever in the last
27 years, so that the float has to go higher to shut off the fuel.After that, I took the carb off, took it apart and cleaned it. And I discovered a screw adjustment on the side that I hadn't seen before. Can someone tell me what this is for, and how it should be adjusted? Could I use it to compensate for the aging of the fuel inlet gizmo so the mixure is leaned out a bit? The adjustment looks a lot like the "idle adjustment" screw you used to find on auto engines, but I don't know if it performs the same function.
Otherwise, do I have to buy a new carb the get the mixture right? I would hate to have to do that. It would probably cost more than the mower. Could I just bend the float arm? I don't see any way to check what the fuel level in the bowl is, or should be.