Bit by a bug....

[John Lyngdal]

I picked up a saw at a local sale, with oft heard claim "It ran last year when I put it away, but now it just won't run". The price was right, so even if the cylinder was scored, as the other parts were worth more than the purchase price.
I got it home and cleaned the acccumulated crud to get a better idea what I was looking at. Dumped the fuel that looked to be mixed with "Red Armor", checked for spark and compression and both were OK. The crankcase must have been full of fuel, from trying to start it as it spit fuel during the compression testing. Pulled the plug and blew out the cylinder with compressed air to remove the excess fuel. Tried to start it, no joy. Thinking that old fuel mucked up the carburetor, I installed a new replacement unit I had on hand. A few pulls and I would get a few slow combustion cycles, before it would stop. It would do this over and over again, open butterfly or closed. Thinking I had flooded the saw, I ran the High and Low needle valves to their seats and pulled the saw over a couple more times. Not even a pop was to be had. I was just about to search through my stash of crankshaft seals, thinking I had a vacuum leak causing when I gave the cord a couple more pulls and the engine staggered to life. After about 30 seconds of low RPM operation a nasty smell pervaded the workshop, then a piece of some sort of bug was ejected out of the muffler. The spark screen of the muffler had been removed and some sort of bug decided to call the muffler a winter home. I'm still working to clean out the muffler, but I'm sure that this was the issue. I've heard of others having similar issues, but this was the first time it happened to me.

 

[Wood Doctor]

Mud daubers love chain saws for homes. They usually get into the pull cord area near the flywheel and build their nests there. The muffler is yet another shelter for them. I've run into several nests through the years. On occasion a nest near the flywheel can short out the ignition coil.

 

[holeycow]

I started up my gsxr1100 one spring in about '94. It started to smell like something was burning and then seeds started to shoot out of the exhaust!. Cooking seeds! Eventually, as I was giving it shots of throttle, a mouse shot out of the right side muffler! I got lucky there was nothing in the cylinders. Little buggers. I've also had one in the airbox of a different bike. Pretty common, really.

 

[GeorgiaVol]

I went to look at an old Suburban once. Put some gas in the carb and you should have seen the buck shot of acorns that came out the tail pipe.

 

[old guy]

Wife took off with our 62 pontiac one day, got about 1/2 mile & engine quit, she opened the hood & there was a woodchuck on top off the engine in a nest she had made from the insulation pulled from the underside of the hood.
Some of the insulation got into the air cleaner stopping the engine. She had to be really rude to the chuck to make it leave.

 

[Mad Professor]

Mud daubers love chain saws for homes. They usually get into the pull cord area near the flywheel and build their nests there. The muffler is yet another shelter for them. I've run into several nests through the years. On occasion a nest near the flywheel can short out the ignition coil.

I had one setup home in an air rifle barrel of a gun I kept in the barn for varmints. Went to shoot a chipmunk and no pellet came out. Get the cleaning kit out......

 

[holeycow]

Good thing that was an airgun...

 

[slimbo3006]

HA!! I just went through this same thing with my generator 2 days ago. pulled the carb multiple times and even switched it with another one.. could not get it to do more than burp for 1-2 seconds. Finally, for some unknown reason, I looked at the exhaust and it was completely clogged by a dirt dauber. a quick poke with a screwdriver and the generator fired up on the first pull... and I spent 2 days off and on fooling with this thing.. for something so simple..

 

[John Lyngdal]

Sounds like your clean-up and recovery was simplier that mine. The bug went through the outer baffles, then apparently grew to the point where it couldn't get out. The muffler was a one piece design and the bug expired on the other side of the cylinder side baffle. I ended up heating up the enire muffler with a propane torch to burn the critter to ashes; man that was a nasty smell. After the muffler cooled, I installed it back on the saw and it worked perfectly. Even ran a couple tanks of fuel through it just to make sure I was rid of it.

 

[KASH]

The mice have built nests in the old SkiDoo mufflers many times on me.I throw the mufflers in an open fire to burn them clean.
Kash

 

[cookies]

down here the dobbers love plugging up the boats outboard engine water pump outlets, folks never learn to tape them over in the fall. Field mice here will pack a cars hvac box in the dash with grass/nuts/leaves over a 3 day weekend to the point air will not flow from the vents. Had a truck come in one winter a cat was sleeping on the engine and the owner started it up to go to work...sucked that cat right into the serpentine belt system and made a hell of a nasty mess i had to scrape off the hood and pressure wash the guts out of every crevice. I'll never forget a old honda accord that had a squirrel nest in the windshield cowling and the sucker stored its acorns in the main air vent in the center of the dash. Every time you would take a corner the acorns would roll very loudly from one end of the dash to the other LOL