To drain or not?

[jamesrxx951]

I have never ran any of my small engines dry. Including my airplane engines. My chainsaw has not been started in at least a year and I can guarantee it will start up within 5 or 6 pulls. My weedeater and leaf blower started right up within 3 pulls this spring after sitting in outside storage for winter storage. Those all use primer bulbs though. That is what we do not have on our engines so it can take a while longer for the fuel pump to start working and draw fuel. Drain all fuel out of the carb and lines and count how many flips it takes to get it running. I would be willing to bet that it is the same or similar to what you are having now.

Oh, E10 fuel and stihl hp ultra oil. I use fuel stabilizer (stabil) in my motorhome and generator but not lawn equipment.

 

[bbblue]

@ Truckracer . Odour control is not an issue either since I store in the garage so some fuel is always left in the tank.
It is the starting issue that has me baffled.

@jamesrxx951 . My practice so far has been not to run the engine dry at the end of the session and 3 months storage would give me a real hard time to have it started. Pump takes a lot of flipping to start drawing fuel in. I can see air bubble in the line move only after a lot of effort. Normal use i.e. every second WD the engine behaves normally (primes correct choked and then starts at the 5 - 6th flip).

I use Redline oil at 30cc/Liter, tuned well and perfoming as expected apart the starting issue I am posting about.
Thank everyone for your response, very enlightening comments indeed.

I added a teaspoon of stabilizer in the can btw.

 

[Vital-Rc]

I never run them dry , during the cold months I rotate my engines 5-10 times every 2-3 weeks . All my engines start right up when I'm ready .

Ethanol free gas and stihl ultra hp 32:1 mixture.