Gotta love mobile phones, I am camping right now and having starting issues.

Symptoms are: yesterday it took a long crank (45-70 seconds) to get it to finally sputter and start. It had no power at all, barely able to move. Messed with the carb idle and air screws, no luck. Problem was figured out to be a clogged air filter, took it out and ran great all night, but still had a long crank time.

This morning it will not start. I think I messed up the carb settings. We can't get it to fire at all. Pulled the plug multiple times and it was always wet. Plug will spark against the engine, but I don't know if it would be considered a hot spark, but it does spark.

What settings should the carb screws be at? Could it be the coil and a weak spark? It always fired good, just no fire after my carb messing. I have tried all different positions with the carb screws but can't get it to fire.

Any advice to salvage this camping trip. I have tools and a multi meter.

Thanks

 

What atv do you have?? OPT

 

Can't believe I forgot that part. 2001 trailblazer 250

 

First thing I would do is check compression. If you don't have a compression gauge handy you can just place your thumb over the plug hole as you crank the engine over,should pop your thumb up if compression is good. You can also just feel how much resistance you have on the pull start. If it's very easy to turn over with not much resistance then low compression could be your problem. Basic air/fuel setting is 1 1/2 to 2 turns out on the carb. Wet plugs are one of the signs when compression is low.,BUT to make sure you have spark just ground a new plug to the engine and check,plus you can pull the plug cap and check bare wire against engine for spark. If it's a weak spark could be just the stator area may need to be cleaned up or could be weak electrical system(stator usually when this happens) If you don't have spark you can also pull the black wire from the cdi (kill circuit) and also the black wire from the reverse limiter module to see if you have spark then. Have had a lot of limiters on the old models short out causing problems. OPT

 

I am back home now and able to type a bit better and be more descriptive. I'll go back a few weeks ago. Bike started, and idled fine, but after riding it up and down the bolck a few times, would stall, and then long crank to get it going, and then had little to no power to move. I thought maybe the carb was dirty so took it loose from the intake and the cylinder head and cleaned it with gumout. let it sit a few weeks. put a new battery in it since the old battery had broken posts. loading it up for the weekend it ran great, good response to throttle, idled good (for the 10 minutes i had it running)..thought i had the prob fixed with a good battery and the gumout.

Loaded the bike up and went camping. unloaded it and it fired right up, got it off the trailer and it rode fine. Let my son get on and told him to go park it somewhere out of the way and it ran fine but had no throttle response. First thought was carb again, so took it apart and shot it with gumout again. never got a good response to that so fiddled with the carb screws (there are two of them, one with an external spring which i learned is a idle screw, and one other, the air screw) thinking it was bogging down and not getting the right mix. no help. Took the air filter off and it perked right up and ran like a bat outta hell. Figured i was not getting air and that was my power robbing issue. It took a long time to turn it over and get fire though for the rest of the night, 45 seconds to a minute. Once it started it ran great though, he rode it all night. I figured the slow start was my carb adjustments coming back to haunt me. next morning it would not fire at all...just crank and crank and crank. Tried the screws in almost every position, checking the plug (always wet), never got fire, but had spark with the plug against the cylinder head. ran and got a new plug and tried it, no luck. THEN noticed that there was fuel leaking out of the exhaust header at the cylinder base. realized there was way to much fuel in there and took the carb off, the plug out and let it air dry, occasionally running the starter, even after 30 minutes of open to the air it was still spitting fuel. used compressed air and tried to dry it out, finally getting it dry. last thing i tried was hooking up the carb with out the fuel line, plug in, and cranked it with starting fluid, hoping to get a bit of combustion, at this point the battery was pretty weak and lost it umph. We packed it up and i brought it home after that.

Is it possible that a jet is leaking and fuel it just completely filling the piston/combustion chamber, flooding it out? I am pretty sure we have good compression, and good spark, most of our issues are around the massive amounts of fuel it is somehow getting.

I guess at this point I should just have the carb looked at, but i have that hope that it started great before this, and my carb fiddling is the problem. and the power issues were corrected by changing the dirty air filter.

at a loss for the moment...sorry so long but thought it would help to hear all the symptoms and attempts at fixing it I had

 

Do a good compression check!! If 100 psi or less you may have found the problem.Unless you have a float needle completely stuck open flooding the crank case, sounds like not enough compression, either the top end or bottom end. MUST have both (good rings and crank seals to atomize the fuel mixture properly) Wet plugs are usually first indicators. OPT

 

i will do that, so shooting for over 100 psi? and if I am under 100 what does the repair encompass? just rings or total top end bore and piston?

 

On a 11 year old machine I wouldn't do just a top end just from what I experienced. BUT,this is just my old opinion again. If the compression is weak because of a worn piston/rings and there is NO up and down play on the rod at the crank and when you roll the crank around and there is no noise or rough feeling around the crank bearings,you might be able to get away with a cylinder bore to the appropriate over size piston. Plus new crank seals also.But if a bottom end goes out it can take out a new top end with it. Have seen this too many times from people that just rebuilt top ends and just brought cylinders in for me to bore and ended up having to completely rebuild. To me it's just like rebuilding one head only on an old V8 engine. OPT

 

it took me a little bit of time to get the compression checked, but it had at 100+, on one try I had 125, but after a couple checks it usually netted around 105. before i had the compression tester i tried the finger over the spark plug hole and after a few cranks it pushed my finger off and puked about a half cup of fuel out of it.

I've taken the carb completely apart, and although there wasn't a lot of crud, i did find some in the "deep port" in the bowl (not sure what it is called) its the port that a thin brass rod extends down into hole in the bowl, and there is a small hole opening in the bottom of the bowl.

Someone told me I may have "washed" the rings with so much fuel in it, and suggested i place a small amount of oil in the cylinder to help out.

At any rate, everything I have done has never made it spudder at all, no cough, no quick fire and die. The new plug is gapped at .028 and will spark across to a cylinder fin.

At a loss for sure here, is there anything i would find or see if i pull the cylinder head? i have kept from tearing all the plastic off for now, hoping it was something simple. The only consistent thing is a over all abundance of fuel it seems.

 

At about 100 psi you could find a small seizure area on piston or cylinder or cylinder may look fine but too much play between piston/rings and cylinder. Pull the head and cylinder and remove the piston. Pull the rings off and place the piston through the bottom of the cylinder and see if you can rock it front to back,plus take a feeler gauge and while holding the piston skirt flush with the bottom of the cylinder see what feeler gauge will fit between the piston and cylinder. If it's .004 or over,time to rebore to next oversize (.005 is considered worn out) New piston to cylinder clearance should be .0015 to .002 MAX. Plus just my again, I wouldn't waste money on just a top end on an old 2 stroke. Crank seals,rod kit ,crank bearings (three of them) should be replaced along with the new piston. Have seen it too may times when a partial job (top end) was done only to have the bottom end go out . OPT