To preface, I know very little about mechanical stuff. I do basic maintenance myself regularly and that's about it.Anyway, I was replacing the fuel filter for my old riding lawn mower and it will run but it continuously surges at high throttle and almost dies at low throttle.Thought maybe it was the fuel filter I was replacing it with, so I put the old one back on and it's doing the same shit.What the fuck did I mess up? I've replaced fuel filters a dozen times on my other equipment with no problems. Mower was running just fine too until the replacement. Still mows just fine thoughbeit as long as you keep it at maximum throttle.Things I've tried with my very limited knowledge and just googling potential fixes is changing the spark plugs, using air intake cleaner on multiple occasions, and tried running some carb cleaner in the fuel tank. Nothing has solved it. It was working fine and only started running poorly after I replaced the fuel filter so I must've fucked something up, just not sure what.picrel, the mower.
How many hours on it? It could be time to do the valve lash or carb cleaning.
>>28981169>How many hours on itNo clue, I got it for free from a family member earlier this year. I've never cleaned a carb before though, so is it easier to just buy a replacement carb to put in if that's the issue? Or is it relatively simple to do?
>>28981167Probably a dozen different things that could be fucked up, but...If it was truly running fine.And you got in there and changed the fuel filter.And now its surging and wont idle.Id say you fucked up the choke cable/linkage and now its stuck partially closed.
>>28981174cleaning the carb is as simple as taking it off and blasting all available orifices with cleaneror you could get one of those buckets of berrymans part cleaner and just dunk the whole thing in there for a day
Before you take the carb off do the ol Mexican carb cleaning where you take the air filter off, have the engine running, grab the throttle linkage on the carb and rev it up and then while holding it wide open smother the carb inlet with a rag until it almost dies then let it get some air and do it again. Do this several times until it quits surging and will run from idle up to full speed without bogging. The extreme vacuum from the engine running at high rpms and then getting completely choked off will suck crud out of the carb passages.
>>28981167>continuously surges at high throttle and almost dies at low throttle.leak in a vacuum line? My old car would do that until I found the leak in one of the vacuum hoses. Lots of vids on YT about fixing that. Check the owners manual to see, or air leak in the carb of fuel injector problemo.
>>28981167It's not uncommon on cars with a carb to get some trash in the needle-and-seat any time you separated the fuel line. Particularly if it has a dual-bowl Holley and there's fuel hose where you separated. That would too-frequently get you a bit of what was probably fuel hose trash in the secondary bowl. The reason it's the secondary is that fuel flow is lower there most of the time so the needle wouldn't be open very much and the trash would wedge itself in there. Anyway, other than that cars weren't that susceptible to fine trash but the passages are much smaller on that one so I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find some sort of debris lodged in the main jet and cutting fuel flow down some.
OP tried to clean the carb- pulled it off, left the fuel line disconnected while smoking and burned to death in his garage.Saw it on the news.Had a wife and newborn baby.
