Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

I need to clean out the carb on my Craftsman machine. Sears came and serviced it a few months back, and the carb was dirty. The tech said dirty carb not covered under warranty. Since that time I had changed the oil, the spark plug, and ran it once or twice, and then stored it (with fuel stabilizer, but I see from some threads that stabilizer is a short term solution at best). Now it is hard to start, and when it starts it coughs and sputters and stalls after a minute or so of running at full throttle - sooner if I turn off the choke or lower the throttle speed. It also lets out some grayish smoke when it does start. The spark plug was replaced a few months ago, but I replaced it again today to try to rule that out, and I'm pretty certain it is gapped correctly. That leaves a dirty carb as the only other problem I can think of. By the way, the machine actually has done this since the first day I got it home, but I waited a while before calling Sears to take a look at it. Since I would like to avoid a service charge because I know they will claim warranty doesn't cover this even though I did everything Sears told me to do, I need to know how to tear down to the carb. A manual or some photo references would be great. The model # for the Blower is 247.88790; for the engine it is LH318SA.

Thanks in advance
Dan