Outdoor Power Equipment and Small Engines - craftsman hedge trimmer bogging down

I have owned the craftsman for a little over a year now. Last year it did not give me any problems, but this year is a whole other story.

This year it started giving me problems while running. It goes bad with just trying to start it. Usually I just fully choke until it kicks over, then I use half choke. Once it's running with half choke I can then move it to no choke. Well that is how it used to work. Now I have to fully choke, then once I get it to half choke I can get it started, but as soon as I give it any gas it bogs down like it isn't getting any gas. I have to really play with it to get it to stay running. The weird thing is, once I can get the revs up on the motor it stays running with out missing a beat, but it's just trying to get past the initial low RPM where it's giving me a hard time. I can't have more than 4 hours on this, and it stayed in the garage all winter long. I looked at the spark plug and air filter and those seem just fine. If you have any suggestions please let me know. :)

You said it was sitting all winter. Clean the fuel system. I assume that there`s a primer. Here`s a quick fix.On craftsman/Poulan H/C the Carburetors are caged in and can be very difficult to reinstall properly. To avoid removal here`s what you do. Pour out all of the gas and while your pouring pump the primer to remove gas from the carb. Using a piece of wire, fish the fuel line (with the filter) out of the tank. Remove the filter and spray WD40 through it to clean it out. Then spray WD40 through the fuel line and pump the primer at the same time until you can see it flow through all of the lines. (WD40 is the best thing to prime 2cycle engines with because it has an oil base)
Put the filter back on the fuel line add fresh mixture and see if this helps.

thanks for the advice. I'm going to try and give it a shot this weekend. I have until Wednesday off so I'm going to have plenty of time to try it out! I sure hope that it works! I hate having something so new and give me so many problems.

And this fall either add stabil to the gas tank and run it long enough to get the stabil in the carb OR empty the tank and start and run til it dies. This will avoid a reoccurrence of this next year.
Mike

well, the weird thing was that the weedeater and the lawn mower had no problem. Not too sure if it's just cause they are both 4 stroke motors. It might also be that they are Honda motors. haha Yeah, I'm going to try to clean the fuel system out tomorrow and see if that makes a difference. Thanks for the tip on the WD-40. :) I'll let you know how my luck goes.

Well, I just swapped out the fuel in the beast and I ran some WD-40 through it. It cleaned it up a lot, but it still tends to bog down when first applying the trigger. Not sure if I need to take the carb apart, or if it will just flush itself out. Any thoughts? Thanks for all the help!

Sounds like you need to take the carb off and clean it well at the least. The WD-40 won't clean the carb out. Get some automotive spray carb cleaner and give it a thorough cleaning.

my only concern is the gaskets. I really do not want to have to try to order a new one. Would I be able to use the luqid gasket to replace the old one? Or, since it' so new, should i just try reusing the old gasket?

On newer equpiment, the gaskets are usually salvageable. Be easy taking it apart, and all the gaskets may cooperate and come apart without tearing.