Carburetor Cleaning

Forward: Learning the following information proved useful a few weeks later as Chris and I found ourselves helping a friend fix up his boat engine during a week long stay at Lake George.  Long story short, the engine to his boat was running roughly and stalling at low RPMs.  Cleaning up the carburetor fixed this and we saved the vacation (not really, but people were really happy to use the boat during the vacation).


Since the gaskets on the carburetor looked new and thing looked mostly in good condition, we only did a basic cleaning on the carburetor.

Step 1 - Removing the idle trim screw.  Before removing the screw, count how many turns it takes to tighten the screw down to where you just start to feel resistance.  In our case, it was 1.5 turns.  (This information is used later when installing the screw.)  After you get this information, unscrew the screw.

Step 2 - Clean the screw and carburetor.  Take some carburetor cleaner and spray the end of the screw clean (notice how black it is in the picture above) and spray the the hole where the screw once was (give it a good spraying).

Step 3 - Spray clean.  To help clear out the carburetor cleaner that was just applied, spray compressed air through the carburetor screw hole.

Step 4 - Screw in the screw.  Screw in the screw all the way back in (until you feel resistance) and then loosen it back out based on the number of turns from step 1.