Stihl Weedeater

I’ve got a used Stihl weedeater I bought last year that I can’t seem to keep running this year. Started it up for the first time tonight and popped off after the first couple pulls. Only problem is as the throttle is pulled it seems like it is either flooding or choking itself out . At idle it will stay running and seems to run OK at half throttle for a few seconds but will shut down after a short time. Anyone have any experience with these? Thank you in advance!

Wow, I can’t believe nobody has blamed this on ethanol.

Most likely fuel evaporated over the winter and gummed up your carb. My leading suspect would be that you have some gum, goo, or other assorted crud on the high speed needle of your carb. That’s probably why it starts fine, but as soon as you try to rev it up, the carb can’t get enough flow through the high jet to keep up.

Do you know how to remove the needle valves on a 2 stroke carb and check/clean them?

Grouse

Fresh gas and sea foam.

Fuel issue. Best bet is a carb cleaning, may be a pump issue too.

I’d check the fuel line from the gas tank to the carb. Ethynol can rot them pretty fast.

It sounds like you may have a crack in the fuel line. Just guessing.

Low speed jet is plugged. It happened to me. Add some Seafoam to the tank, hit the primer bulb and pull it over. If it runs, cool. Shut it off and let it sit for 24 hrs. Try it again. Fixed my issue.

Coud be from gas left over gumming up, didn’t see or smell any fuel leaking tonight like I would think I would from a cracked line. I could be wrong though, it’s happened before. I do run Sta-bil with every tank and ran a Lucas fuel treatment tonight that probably wasn’t very effective being it would only run at lower rpm’s. As far as removing the needles on the carb, never done it before, but willing to give it a shot if it’s something a guy can do himself.

There is a spark arrester (fine screen) in the muffler that carbons up and makes it seem that the motor is running rich. Take the muffler off and clean the screen or take it out.

x 2

Befor you turn the low or high speed needles screws do Like said above. Empty out all the old gas and put in enough so that it will pump through the primer bulb into the carburator. Then empty it out by disconnecting the fuel line from the carb and pump it completely out, this will clean the fuel line or any sediment. Then put in gas with seafoam and like Criss said let it sit overnight to dissolve any varnish etc., then empty that again the same way. Put in fresh gas and oil mix with seafoam mixed in and see how it runs then.

A good example is some guys run thier engines completely out of gas at the ramp to prevent gas from getting old sitting in the carburator. If any of the above doesn’t work the carburator needs cleaning. Smaller engines are trickier to work on then lawn mower sized engines so it might be a good idea to find a shop that works on them. If it does start after the seafoam has been added but still runs rough just run it or let it sit and idle until it runs out of gas so the seafoam removes as much of the varnish as it can. If you need help on how to remove all the needles and get them back into place right, and at the right amount of turns PM me and I’ll help.