Not one, but two saws refuse to rev.

[GrassGuerilla]

So I have this largish maple to drop law week. Seems like a good enough excuse to run the 046. After a couple minutes warm up, I make a nice face cut. Everything's good, perfect weather, saw running strong as could be asked. Walk around the tree, give the trigger a squeeze, nothing. It doesn't rev, it just kinda fell on its face. I was puzzled, but also kinda freakin out. Here I am with a big notch in an already dead maple that's shedding some bark, so less than ideally stable. No worries, I brought the Timberwolf just in case. Got it down, and my brother grabs my trusty cs-4400 and starts limbing the small end. A few minutes in it too refuses to rev.

Go back a few days, we had all kinds of flash flooding throughout the area. Inches of rain in hours. My walk behind mower got contaminated with bad gas. After tipping it off, it barely made I off the trailer before it started running rough then died. Drained the bowl, and sure enough, cloudy **** came out. Changed the fuel filter, drained the bowl some more and back into action. Next day, mower started fine, ran ok for three jobs, then kaput. Wouldn't idle, kept surging up and down.

When the first saw went down, I was too flummoxed to think clearly. I was a bit freaked about a saw petering out with a big notch out of a dead tree in a suburban front yard. When the second saw quit, it dawned on me that the mix was likely bad too. To top that off, the truck ran like **** on the way home. Man what a mess. Guess I'll be cleaning carbs for a while... And buying all my gas from one source going forward.

 

[fearofpavement]

If it's just a fuel issue, that sounds simple and cheap compared to other dire stuff. Probably don't need to do the carbs and all, just dump out what's in there and put in some fresh mix. It should clear up. You may have gotten a load of ethanol. (stop buying that E-85!)

 

[Full Chisel]

Sure sounds like bad gas to me...that affects me at times too.

 

[Mac 6-10]

I think we got 4 inches that night in like 2 hours. Had to pull the driveway out of the yard. No water in any of my fuel though.

 

[GrassGuerilla]

Never touch the e-85. **** ain't fit to burn.

Best I can say for certain is one of two gas stations got contaminated during the flash flooding. The can that went into the mower had some left in it when I topped it off, so I can't pin it down. I'm thinking it was the fill up the morning the truck seemed to be running rough. Believe I topped off my mix can with 1 gallon of 87. I usually mix only 89.

Edit: I'm pretty careful with my fuel.