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

New to me leaf blower (Craftman 358.794941). Cylinder and ring were shot, so I replaced them and now I have good compression. Was able to start it, it ran for a bit and I put it aside. Fast-forward to today. Leaf on the ground, need to use it. Start it, ran for a bit and then stopped. Primer bulb was fairly hard to press and took a bit to come back to its shape (instructions say to press it -8- times before attempting to start the engine). Had gas, open carb, mesh filter was fairly dirty, cleaned it up. Restarted, ran for a bit more, stopped again. Damn it! Re-opened carb and cleaned it a lot more with carb cleaner (too it all apart). Then I realized that I had run out of gas.... Anyway, after this clean-up, it looks like the primer bulb is much easier to push (like significantly!) and gets back in shape very quickly. However, it appears that: - there is quite a bit of gas that gets push to engine cylinder every push of primer - engine will die when choke is moved off “mostly choked” - The needle/spring/pivot look to be in good condition. I’m thinking that the carb cleaner (pressurized aerosol) might have damaged the jet that is now leaky. Thoughts?

The bulb is a purge bulb and not a primer bulb. It should not be pushing any fuel into the cylinder but rather pushing fuel through the carburetor. You can either buy a carburetor diaphragm repair kit, Walbro no. K-20, or buy a replacement Chinese carburetor for only a few dollars more. The carburetor number is Walbro WT-875-A and sell for approx. $16 on Amazon.