Going for the most random thread of the month..

[frogdink]

anybody have an old jacobsen snowblower, Imperial 626...78ish that i could ask questions about. cant get mine running right. thanks. -Joe

[Ken Talbot]

Briggs or Tecumseh?

[frogdink]

Tecumseh

[Ken Talbot]

Well, not quite the same as my '79 vintage blower with the Briggs, but most of the basics should be about the same.

Fuel, air, spark:

Spark:
- stick a new plug in it right off the get-got, even if the current one looks okay. My BIL, a long time mechanic, won't even begin any diagnostics on a small motor with an old plug.
- check for a nice fat spark plug with the plug sitting against the top of the head. Would not advise having SWMBO hold the plug while you pull the starter cord.

Fuel:
- gotta have fresh gas. I got lazy with this year, and experienced poor running from the bit of water still in the stale gas until about half way through the second tank.
- take the hose off of the petcock to check flow. I've seen quite a good size piece of ice come out of a petcock once the temperature dropped, cause by a drop of water still sitting in there from over summer
- replace the fuel filter if you're running one. Again, in case it got a bit of water in it over time and is half frozen up, or has just plain plugged up.
- play with the adjustment screw, normally starting from a couple of turns out from lightly seated. The sweet spot on my old Briggs will go off with even only 1/16th of a turn

Air:
- if it has an air cleaner, make sure the element is clean. My old Briggs doesn't actually have an air cleaner, not sure how the old Tecumsehs were put together.
- make sure the muffler is in decent shape and is not leaking where it attaches to the head. Even these simple motors need a bit of backpressure.
- make sure the intake to the muffler is not carboned shut. I saw this one on a buddy's old lawnmower.

Fuel:
- if the above doesn't get you there, go into the carb. Triple cleaning a carb on one of these is way easier than tackling a bank of four Mikunis.

Hope this helps.

BTW - I moved us over here to the Members forum, can't really consider a snowblower to belong to the "Other Bikes" category.

[Bud Manley]

I beat the hell out of my old Tecumseh snow blower crank for hours this year. Unscrewed the float bowl screw dealy a 1/2 turn and it fired right up.
I'm not sure why or how it got screwed in but thats all it took.
Anyone got a manual for a tecumseh snow blower? Its a big one with gear driven wheels. Kinda old. No writing of any kind on it.

I found it last year in some guys front yard with a big FREE sign on it.

[frogdink]

?

i got it running. starts on first pull every time. moves snow pretty well too. the belts are not broken but they are so old that they look and feel like hard plastic/steel mess. my grandfather dies about a year ago and this was his, that is why i am doing this all at once, finding things as i go. i can see the top of the belt fine, cant figure out how to get to the pullys underneath and change them. any ideas?

[Ken Talbot]

Most times, you need to remove the top two bolts which connect the front half of the machine to the rear half, and loosen the bottom two bolts, so you can pivot or "open the clamshell" to get access for changing the belts.