Its snowing and there's 6 inches on the sidewalk with more to come. As usual its a bitch to try to start the gas powered snowblower at the start of the season. Its a 3hp Toro with the fiber auger, a small model but ideal for what I want to do.
Cleaning the spark plug didn't solve the problem. So I used a paint stripper to heat up the cylinder block since I already had the front panel off to reach the spark plug. It started and spat out a lot of smoke, cleared all the excess fuel and perhaps last season's stuff as well. Did my snow clearing and the blower ran for 30 minutes without trouble and ran with a clean exhaust.
Its just below freezing now and sometime later in the season the temperature can drop to minus 20 or minus 30 deg C and I will have a problem starting the motor again. Last year I took in into the house to warm it up and of course there is a wet mess on the landing I would like to avoid this season.
My solution is to take advantage of the 3/4 inch restrictor nozzle attachment that came with the paint stripper to heat the engine block without having to unscrew the metal control panel. So I eyeballed a position over the engine block top, but away from the spak plug rubber cable, and drilled an enlarged 3/4 inch hole that will let this heater nozzle snuck into the hole. So far it looks pretty good. I'll let the snow blower freeze as usual and try out my hot restart for the next job.