Mower dies after running for 20-30 minutes

jeepinmatt said:
And the saga continues...
It was slow to crank a couple weeks ago, battery was weak, so put a new Sam's Club Duracell in it, now it busts right off! And ran for like 1-2 minutes, started stumbling, died. I had not put a fuel filter on it yet, so I went to O'Reilly and picked one up, figured some junk had clogged the carb. Pull the carb off, clean it up, install the filter, cranked right up, rn great for about 4-5 minutes, then just died almost instantly. It was by the porch, and the wife was on the porch swing so we talked for a few minutes and she commiserated in my sadness and frustration, then it cranked and ran enough to get 2/3's of the way back to the shop. I sat there and searched marketplace for mowers for about 5-10 minutes, realized they are just way too expensive, and decided to fix mine, but it wouldn't crank and I needed to get it to the shop. The side by side said "ok". :laughing:
View attachment 460260

Pulled the carb and this time there was a nice mix of gas and muddy looking water in the float bowl.
View attachment 460263

I pulled the line off after the fuel pump and watched it pump some stuff that looked like muddy water too. Aha!
Pulled the fuel guage and looked in the bottom of the tank on the "good" side that was empty:
View attachment 460261

Other tank was also full and looked the same. Those plastic things are fuel cap retainers that were dropped in and never retrieved by the PO. While not ideal, I couldn't get a bite on them to pull them out, but the shop vac and some brake parts cleaner took care of everything else. In the end I pulled both tanks off, siphoned 5 gallons out of 1, and cleaned them nearly to perfection. In the 5 gallon tank that I siphoned out and it was drawing from when it died, I ended up with this:
View attachment 460262

And of course there was more that had already been through the engine and in the carb and drained out. No idea how that got there, or how long it has been there, but I'm 100% certain it wasn't helping anything :D

Cleaned every single line, filter, carb, and fuel pump, pulled the tank pickups and cleaned them, etc. So hopefully I'm FINALLY done f'n around with this thing and can just cut my too tall grass. Of course it was after 9pm by the time I got done fiddlin with it, but I cranked it til the completely dry fuel system primed and the motor cranked, then cut it off. Tomorrow will tell the tale.
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Considering our 60” ZT Bad Boy is now doing the same things from your OP…and we are here now. I hate you because I’ve been avoiding cleaning the whole fuel system. Mainly because the carb is behind the rear “bumper”’and I have to disassemble an unreasonable amount of things to access it.
 
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