So I bought a brand new Craftsman push mower last spring. It has the 5.5 Gold Series Briggs & Stratton engine. It ran fine all last year. This year it has started surging. Aside from not running smoothly, it doesn't cut as efficiently,as a result. Yesterday I took off the muffler, intake manifold and carburetor (I'm not a mechanic, just a tinker). The carburetor looked really clean, but I cleaned it out with some wire anyways (nothing came out). The gas collection bowl thing wasn't sludged up at all. I then noticed that the spark plug was really fouled. The tip and the insert were pitch black. I have since found out that having too much oil and not enough gas causes this (I did overfill the oil last late summer/fall and it was shooting out large plumes of white smoke for a while). I replaced the spark plug with a brand new one, put everything back together and started it up. It seemed to be running "OK", but not perfect. It seemed to be running at low RPM and was bogging down very very quickly. After cutting a very small section, and stopping and starting the mower a few times to test things out, it went back to surging like it was before and the engine still seems to be running "rough", with a slight almost metallic noise.
I'm not a mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, just good at Googling and watching youtube videos lol.
Any ideas on what would be causing this? I'd rather try and fix it myself rather than spend $100+ dollars to get it serviced. The mower itself was only a little over $200.
Thanks!
I'm not a mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, just good at Googling and watching youtube videos lol.
Any ideas on what would be causing this? I'd rather try and fix it myself rather than spend $100+ dollars to get it serviced. The mower itself was only a little over $200.
Thanks!