My General Life Philosophy: Just Blame the Carburetor
When I was in college, my parents bought me a chainsaw for my birthday. I was going through my Thoreau phase when I wanted to be an enlightened lumberjack. That didn’t pan out exactly, but the chainsaw—an Echo CS-400—has served me well throughout the years. It has started and run reliably and hasn’t cut off any appendages, which is really all you can ask for in a good chainsaw.
Last year, after Hurricane Helene, I had to run the chainsaw hard. We had several massive oaks blown down, snapped like twigs by the wind, and the chainsaw, limb by limb, dismembered the oaks, slowly and steadily chewing through them. The chainsaw revved and roared until it developed a bad habit on the very last tree. It would run for about twenty minutes at a time, then reliably bog down and stall, after which you couldn’t get it to start again until you let it sit for an hour or so. And it has been that way ever since.
Thankfully, I haven’t had much need to cut up anything major since Helene, so twenty minute run-time has always been adequate for the minor jobs that have needed doing around the farm. But it has been on my to-do list to fix the chainsaw, and this past weekend I finally got around to doing it. I’m proud to say it only took me all day.
I’m no expert on small engine repair, but I know enough to know that old men who know a thing or two about engines always blame the carburetor. If you ever need a scapegoat, just blame the “carburetor.” At the very least, it makes you sound smart and mechanically inclined and is a generally plausible excuse for all sorts of predicaments.
SCENARIO 1:
COP: You were going 65 in a 55 zone.
DRIVER: Sorry, sir, I think the carburetor was running a little lean.
SCENARIO 2:
WIFE: Did you hear what I said?
HUSBAND: Sorry, I was listening to the idle. I think the carb needs adjusting.
SCENARIO 3:
ANNOYING COWORKER: You want to hang out this weekend?
EMPLOYEE: Sorry, I’ve got an appointment to get my carburetor cleaned.
Surprisingly, I was able to get the old carburetor off and the new carburetor on without too much trouble (or too many leftover pieces). Much to my surprise, the chainsaw fired right up. This time, however, it ran for about twenty seconds before stalling, which I took to mean the new carburetor needed adjusting. The idle was running lean at first and the throttle was running rich (or maybe it was vice versa—who the heck really knows what rich and lean mean anyway?). In any event, the engine kept flooding, and I’d have to remove the spark plug to unflood it, and sometimes I’d just have to let it sit for an hour before I could start it, but finally I got it running good and purring like a kitten, until it bogged down again at twenty minutes—ARRRGGGG!!!!
So after scouring YouTube, I finally figured out what was wrong with the chainsaw in the first place—the gas tank vent was completely clogged. The clog would cause some sort of vacuum in the tank to form at around the twenty-minute mark that prevented gas from flowing to the engine. The good news is it was a three-dollar plastic piece that took me all of ten minutes to switch out, and now the saw runs like a charm. The bad news is it took me all day to fix a carburetor that didn’t need fixing in the first place.
Good to remember when I perform pathetically under pressure. It's that darn choke setting.