A little help to get my old handheld blower to stay running?

[vankjeff]

My old Handheld Blower part #(S/N?) 08035R starts and runs great but it simply won't stay running. I fight it and I always need to keep pumping that gas bulb to shoot in some primer gas and restart it. Sometimes I can get it to restart and sometimes I just need to give up. This happens every time I try to use it these days. The carb gasket kit for this model is discontinued or I would rebuilt it myself since I know enough to do that type stuff.
What can I do, anything?
While I'm asking, what are the normal High and Low carb fuel mixture screw settings supposed to be?

I really love this blower. I don't want to get a new wired or wireless one.

[sweepleader]

Someone almost certainly has parts for this blower, even if Homelite has discontinued them. You can check on line, search for "Homelite XXXXX (part number). Or you could post the part numbers here on this thread. There are members here who have tons of parts.

[jerseyhighlander]

It's very unlikely that a carb kit is no longer available. If you open up the air cleaner, remove the filter & take out the screws, usually two, that hold the air cleaner housing on and often go right through the carb to hold it on also, you should be able to find information stamped into the sides of the carb. It's probably a Zama or maybe a Walbro manufacture. Should have some numbers/letters stamped or printed on that ID the model and you can get a kit from numerous potential sources.

The problem you are having sounds a lot like a bad fuel tank vent. The fuel tank is depressurizing as fuel is used and the vent not letting air in. Not positive on this model but the vent is probably in the fuel tank cap. When it starts to have a problem running, loosen the cap and see if it changes. Fuel lines may be going bad too. They tend to collapse where they pass through the tank. Try replacing them. Otherwise, the trouble will certainly be in the carb.

[vankjeff]

Thanks guys. I'll try taking the easy way out first with a clogged tank vent. That sounds easy to deal with. I should have mentioned in my Question that in the past, after the blower would quit, I’d learned that I would hear a hissing noise when I would unscrew the gas cap but unscrewing it would also help make it easier to restart the blower.
That seemed weird to me but since I thought it was blowing out pressure in the tank, I'd thought that maybe this was some strange 2-cycle that actually pressurized the fuel tank using crankcase pressure to help it feed gas up to the carb so that it didn't need to suck it up.
I was also confused since I saw 2 lines leading from the carb to the fuel tank that look the same and only one is connected to the weighted fuel pickup piece that help it to stay down in the fuel.
I couldn't figure out what the other one could be for so pressurizing the tank was my best guess even though I'd never known of any 2-cycle engine having this, including the Yamaha & many other go-kart racing engines that I raced for years.
But I'd also learned that briefly unscrewing the gas cap would then let it restart & run for a while, unlike lately where I'd forgotten that trick and had struggled to get it to restart, only to also struggle to keep it running for more than 5 or 10 seconds.
So, it looks like the tank’s vent is in the gas cap. Maybe I should just let it soak in a bowl of straight gas and that might dissolve any old 2-cycle oil that dried in the vent screen filter over the years of it sitting I used?

I don't have an air compressor anymore so I can't easily just blow it out after soaking it.

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[vankjeff]

I took the cover off of the air filter and I do see 2 nuts that will take off the filter box and probably the carb too. I didn't do that yet since as I said in my other Reply that I'm going to try the easy fix first by making sure that the tank vent isn't the problem.

Here's a picture of the carb in place and also one of the many go-karts that I raced back in the day. We obviously had to get pretty good at tuning carbs since that's how those little engines made max HP if they'd been fitted with good clearances and blueprinted to have all of the moving parts perfectly aligned.
Open engines were a whole 'nother story. Then you needed to pay a pro to grind your ports and do other tricks. ;-)

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[sweepleader]

Not much point in working on the carb till you are sure the tank vent is working. The vent should easily allow air in but not out so the fuel stays in.

[jerseyhighlander]

Sept 3, 2018 12:43:24 GMT -5 vankjeff said:

Thanks guys. I'll try taking the easy way out first with a clogged tank vent. That sounds easy to deal with. I should have mentioned in my Question that in the past, after the blower would quit, I’d learned that I would hear a hissing noise when I would unscrew the gas cap but unscrewing it would also help make it easier to restart the blower.
That seemed weird to me but since I thought it was blowing out pressure in the tank, I'd thought that maybe this was some strange 2-cycle that actually pressurized the fuel tank using crankcase pressure to help it feed gas up to the carb so that it didn't need to suck it up.
I was also confused since I saw 2 lines leading from the carb to the fuel tank that look the same and only one is connected to the weighted fuel pickup piece that help it to stay down in the fuel.
I couldn't figure out what the other one could be for so pressurizing the tank was my best guess even though I'd never known of any 2-cycle engine having this, including the Yamaha & many other go-kart racing engines that I raced for years.
But I'd also learned that briefly unscrewing the gas cap would then let it restart & run for a while, unlike lately where I'd forgotten that trick and had struggled to get it to restart, only to also struggle to keep it running for more than 5 or 10 seconds.
So, it looks like the tank’s vent is in the gas cap. Maybe I should just let it soak in a bowl of straight gas and that might dissolve any old 2-cycle oil that dried in the vent screen filter over the years of it sitting I used?

I don't have an air compressor anymore so I can't easily just blow it out after soaking it.

Sometimes you just need somebody else to say out loud, what you already new...

That green thing in the center of the underside of the cap, should be a duckbill valve. Little rubber check valve. Soaking it may help or may not. They tend to melt into goo over enough years. Especially if you're using ethanol based gasoline. The black part surrounding it should (should) come off to let you change it. Not exactly sure how that cap works. The small end that you can see of the green, should have slit in the center that will open.
I could be totally off on this, but the green duckbills, I think, are Poulan parts. Homelite/poulan.. they are available. I'm sure Leon has some.

The two fuel lines is one to the tank, with the weighted filter on it and the other to return the fuel to the tank that you are pumping through the carb with the primer bulb.

[5terrysupersaws]

The UT number for this hand held blower is ; UT:08035-R ...which is a model  HB25150V

The carburetor on this unit is a Walbro-WT series...Repair kit: Walbro K20-WAT

[vankjeff]

Sept 3, 2018 22:27:45 GMT -5 5terrysupersaws said:

The UT number for this hand held blower is ; UT:08035-R ...which is a model  HB25150V

The carburetor on this unit is a Walbro-WT series...Repair kit: Walbro K20-WAT

Thanks 5terrysupersaws Saw Builder & Jerseyhighlander. You both have saved me some time & effort so I don't need to look things up.

That extra fuel tank line must be what feeds fuel to that primer pump bubble. That makes sense. I'd never really looked at it that close other than to notice that there were 2 similar lines heading down into the fuel tank.
My bad. ;-)
I'd still really like to hear what the suggested carb Settings are just to make sure that they're close. Right now I find 2 turns out on High and 1 turn out on Low.
I have now cleaned the gas cap and its vent I took a little cup and put some fuel injector cleaner in it and then I put my fuel cap in it and let it soak for a day. I didn't want to use Gunk or Carb Cleaner since I thought that might hurt the rubber duckbill check valve that I see hanging on it. That thing is soft & I think that it works OK. Who knows if there is or was any junk up in the net type filter that’s in the cap above that that I can see it in in the center of the top of the cap. It looks OK.

The rubber duckbill check valve is fairly flexible so I can't imagine air pressure having any problem seeping past it.
I haven't yet tried starting it to see if it does what it had been doing which was just running for a while and then quitting and being hard or impossible to restart.

I'll give it a try tomorrow and report back
I do remember last year when I finally got it to start after it had sat for years unused and wouldn't start, that if it quit like this, I could unscrew the cap and I would hear a gush of air and then it could magically be restarted.

I guess since many months had passed and I just got a mower to start mowing my own lawn again after we let our lawn guy go, and that I hadn't used this blower in many months, maybe something hardened in the vent in the filter and that's what's been causing this problem? I sure hope that's it. I'll be SO HAPPY. I need something good to happen in my life.
I suppose that if I do get it running dependably, I should probably try to buy a carb gasket kit and save it for the future? I'm sure they won't get any cheaper or easier to find over time. ;-)

Here's a few of my old go-kart racing pics. I also used to own a company for 20+ years that made 75% of the spun aluminum wheels used in the nation's go-kart racing industry. I'm on the History tab up top on their new www.vankwheels.com site.
The white kart was my 125cc shifter kart that topped out at about 125 mph on big tracks like Daytona International Speedway's road course which uses 3/4 of the oval.

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[vankjeff]

That extra fuel tank line must be what feeds fuel to that primer pump bubble? If so, that makes sense. I'd never really looked at it that close other than to notice that there were 2 similar lines heading down into the fuel tank.

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[sweepleader]

Fuel goes from the tank, through the filter to the carb. The primer bulb pulls fuel that same way and sends air and excess fuel back to the tank though the second line that does not have the filter. It is a one way loop, tank, filter, carb, bulb, tank. Always flows in that direction, just so you understand how it works. The bulb does not draw fuel from the tank but rather it draws air and fuel from the carb, to get the air out of the carb which draws fuel from the tank and primes the fuel pump in the carb.

[vankjeff]

Sept 6, 2018 7:47:37 GMT -5 sweepleader said:

Fuel goes from the tank, through the filter to the carb. The primer bulb pulls fuel that same way and sends air and excess fuel back to the tank though the second line that does not have the filter. It is a one way loop, tank, filter, carb, bulb, tank. Always flows in that direction, just so you understand how it works. The bulb does not draw fuel from the tank but rather it draws air and fuel from the carb, to get the air out of the carb which draws fuel from the tank and primes the fuel pump in the carb.

Thanks Sweepleader. Can you give me a base setting for L and H so I can hope to have it close & try it now that I've messed with the cap's vent?
As I said earlier, L is at 1 turn out and H is at 2 turns out. That doesn't seem right to me. I know that they just need to be close to start. Then I guess I'd need to figure out how to fine tune them.
Also, I must have accidentally unset this site to Notify me of Replies. I can't find where I did that so I can fix it. Do you know?

[vankjeff]

I found the Notifications settings at houseofhomelite.proboards.com/user/3050/edit_notifications
Apparently you can only find them on a PC and not on my Windows smartphone. I've seen other forums that treat you differently like this. Facebook Community is one. It only lets you ask your own question and actually post it if you're on a real computer. Phones will only display the Questions others have asked and the Answers they got.
ALSO, on my phone this site is broken. It clearly said that I have NO RECENT ACTIVITY and NO THREADS (or something like that). And yet if I use my PC, it's all here.
This site should really be fixed. That scared the he** out of me since I thought that my whole thread was gone and there was important Part # and info in it that I wanted to make a note of. But then I went onto my PC and VIOLA it was all there.
So, my site suggestion for Mr. IT man, is to fix this problem for your members. After all, life is all about using smartphones these days and some of us even have oddball Windows 10 phones and not iPhones or Androids. ;-)
Also, while I'm giving User Site Experience advice, whenever I create a Reply on my PC, I type it all in and I hit a REPLY button, it then pops the screen with a box with all of my new text now at the top of the page. This box has a button in the lower right saying CREATE POST.

HUH? Do I need to hit this too? Isn't this some confusing 2 step process that some might not follow through on since the think that they're done after the 1st one?

[sweepleader]

Set the screws about 1 to 1-1/4 turn out to start, adjust the idle mix and idle speed to get the fastest idle. Adjust the idle mix for higher speed, then slow it down with the idle speed screw. If it won't idle when you start, set the idle speed up until it will run on its own, then begin adjusting the mix screw. After the idle is set you can adjust the high speed mix. If it does not want to accelerate when you think you have both set, open the idle up a little and reset the idle speed. Enriching the idle helps acceleration.

I know nothing about your phone problem but there are a couple of guys here who probably will. My guess is its your phone cuz there are quite a few members that use phones and do not report that problem.

The posting thing- There are two ways to post, the quick reply at the bottom of this page. Type and hit 'Post Quick Reply' in the lower left corner. If you hit "Reply" in the upper right you get a chance to add pictures to your post and mess with a lot of other things. If hit Reply right away, it takes you to that page right away to add pics or whatever. It is only two steps if you want to do more than type your post. Of course it gets posted either way.

[vankjeff]

I've now tuned the carb to the best of my ability. If I just let it sit on the ground with me giving it a little throttle most of the time, it will run for a long time.
The throttle cable & idle speed setting must be a little messed up inside the blower's housing and it sometimes wants to get stuck on a pretty high idle so I'm OK just leaving it set to a low idle rpm and keep it running myself.
But if I pick it up to go use it, it keeps dieing almost instantly.
I've even tried doing this with the gas tank cap either slightly unscrewed and even completely off and neither helps it to stay running. So it must not be a tank venting issue.
It does seem to restart now much easier than it used to.
I’ve watched the fuel level in the primer bulb as it is running and I see it being fed fuel to keep it about 1/3 to ½ full. That doesn't change when it's about to die or has died.
What's can I try next?

[vankjeff]

With what little I know about fuel tanks and their ability to deliver fuel when they're moving (from my decades of building those long aluminum side fuel tanks to fit lay down racing go-karts that I put pictures of in an earlier Reply at my Van-K company) my guess in this blower would be that the weighted fuel pickup might be bad and be leaking air whenever it is moved by picking up the blower? Does that sound reasonable and do you know it happening before?
That would explain why it only seems to die after I pick it up & try to go use the blower.

[vankjeff]

Are any of you near me in Anaheim, California and if so, would you be willing to let me drop by with this blower to see what you could do to it to make it work?
I'm at home 24/7 on permanent federal disability after a crazy MX accidental so time isn't an issue for me but saving money is. 🙂
I could even ship it somewhere if someone was up for that.

[5terrysupersaws]

Hmm..In all the photos of the blower,I notice the choke lever is in the FULLY CLOSED position.
Could this be the source of the problem ?
Rotate the choke lever up (fully open position) and try it again..

[vankjeff]

Thanks 5terrysupersaws but I really do know how to use the choke. I start the blower with the lever fully down and then I move it to 1/2 way up (1/2 open) then after it warms up I move it up fully to open it.
I've actually been doing all of this tuning and trying to get it to run with the air filter cover off to make sure that it was getting plenty of air flow into the carb.

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[5terrysupersaws]

Okay..check the fuel filter and rebuild the carburetor.

Also fuel level looks low.