Recently I discovered that my sidewalk gets very slippery when wet. Some sort of moss or algae grows on the surface causing the walk way to look back or dark green. When that material is wet it become very slippery. After nearly falling I decided it was time to get those sidewalk cleaned up. One problem though, was that my big pressure washer wasn’t working. I couldn’t get it started and even if I did manage to start it, the engine would die immediately. So I decided to use my smaller pressure washer.
The small pressure washer is only 1750 psi and runs on an electric engine. I picked it up at Harbor Freight years ago. I used this pressure washer to wash my cars and for cleaning the house. The big pressure washer is 3200 psi and I use that to take paint off of fences, etc. It is a real work horse but it is a gas engine and gas engines always seem to foul at some point.
Before I get into why I had to fix my big pressure washer, let me show some side by side pictures of before and after pressure washing. Although these pictures are of two different sections of the sidewalk you can see how the picture on the left shows the dark green/black material where as the photo on the right is the sidewalk after cleaning. If you notice the two trees on either side of the sidewalk the distance from the paddle boards to the two trees is roughly two sections of concrete. It took me 2.5 to 3 hours to clean that short distance with the 1750 psi pressure washer. It took that long because the effective cleaning tip is only about an inch wide otherwise the tip is too far away from the surface to completely remove the moss and dirt. The job would be much faster by using the bigger pressure washer. I decided to fix the big pressure washer so I could finish my cleaning job.
Fixing the Pressure Washer
About a year ago, might be longer, my pressure washer failed to start. I about gave myself a heart attack trying to pull start that engine. I knew I needed a better way to get the engine started. I had already partially taken apart the Generac pressure washer so that I could use a drill for starting the machine. By removing the pull cord I was able to get access to the fly wheel nut. I used a 19 mm socket on an electric drill socket bit. The power of the drill spins the fly wheel to start the engine. Just like they do in Indycar. Here is a guy who built one similar to what I did.
The Carburetor
The obvious place to start to start troubleshooting was with the carburetor. I figured the carb was probably junked up with debris and wouldn’t let the fuel flow into the combustion chamber correctly. It was real easy to remove the carburetor.
The carburetor assembly (labeled 1) is a $75 component but rather than buy a new unit I just took mine apart. There is a 10mm bolt at the bottom of the carb that releases the bowl that houses the float and fuel jet.
I used Berryman B-12 Chemtool to clean the carb. This stuff really smells potent. Make sure you have plenty of ventilation before using this product. I ended up soaking some of the parts to get the gum out of the carb. I also used a needle to get into the ports to clear away any lingering debris. There really wasn’t more to the clean out except what was inside the float chamber. I also tested air flow from the main fuel line to make sure there weren’t any debris caught inside that tube. I found this link which is helpful for understanding small engine carbs.
Other Problem Areas
Thinking beyond the carb, there is also a fuel filter and spark plug that could be a problem. It turns out the fuel filter isn’t inline. It took me a minute to figure that out and I did so by examining the parts diagram for the fuel system.
Item #2 in the diagram is the fuel filter. This system filters the fuel as it gets poured into the gas tank. The filter is a small plastic and wire mess removable cup. You can easily clean that out thus no filter to replace.
I also removed the spark plug thinking a bad spark plug will also cause the pressure washer to stop working. Mine wasn’t too bad but it was blackened. I decided to go ahead and replace it. While I couldn’t find the exact plug, my hardware store had a suitable replacement. The code for the spark plug is printed on the plug itself. We used a spark plug equivalent tool to match the specs to a Champion brand plug. I used my spark plug socket to remove the old one and to insert the new one.
Conclusion
After changing the oil I put the pressure washer back together and ran a test start up. This machine started on the first attempt. I put the pull string back over the fly wheel and attempted a manual pull start and again the engine started on the first pull. I am so happy I was able to get the Generac started and was able to finish the rest of the patio and sidewalk space over the next couple of days. Here are some of the finished photographs that I haven’t shown above.
