Why are 2-stroke engines so consistantly unreliable

[geem]

Carb cleaner, spawn of the devil! Snake oil! The reason being is that peeps wave it everywhere on the outside of the carb without stripping and think thats it
The only answer is a PROPER stripdown and some copper wire, judiciously used!
The main jet is easy to get at, everyone takes the bowl off and cleans that BUT the issue is with the pilot jets and internal passages that arent easy to get to.
The biggest prob today is the alcohol that the EU force fuel companies to put in petrol in the name of saving the planet! (5% the last I heard of) Sigh! it doesnt, can you imagine, the alcohol comes from fermenting food stuffs. All the peeps that are starving in the world and the wonderful tree hugger and bunny lover tribe say that fermenting foodstuff is good to produce alcohol to put the product in petrol is really good!
Anyway, alcohol absorbs water, so it absorbs water that ends up lying in your carb over the winter.
when the petrol and alcohol aevaporates, then small amounts of water are left which then corrodes your jets which are made of brass and leaves a nice blocking material on them! Your honda floatbowls which are made of steel rust away from this water and the aluminium float bowls on others react with the water to form a grey jelly like material which lies in the float bowl to block etc.
The answer, as I have said, is strip and MANUALLY clean the jets and passageways. Also drain the flaot bowl on a regular basis to get rid of alcohol absorbed water.

Great advice Stu. I use compressed air off a dive bottle to blow jets through seems to work

 

[JumbleDuck]

Carb cleaner, spawn of the devil! Snake oil! The reason being is that peeps wave it everywhere on the outside of the carb without stripping and think thats it
The only answer is a PROPER stripdown and some copper wire, judiciously used!

I have always thought of carburettor cleaner as the stuff which the removes the varnish-type residue you find outside and inside carbs, as part of a proper rebuild, and not as a magic potion to make it work better.

 

[lw395]

I have always thought of carburettor cleaner as the stuff which the removes the varnish-type residue you find outside and inside carbs, as part of a proper rebuild, and not as a magic potion to make it work better.

Exactly. It's a useful cleaning solvent and great value for money from your local motor factor. Being in an aerosol, it also blows throough the small passages in some carbs. I've often found whipping off the float bowl, a squirt of cleaner in the float bowl and another squirt into the bottom of the carb turns a non-running engine into a goer. So that's 2 screws and 2 minutes instead of a full stripdown.