[Public-List] A4 Engine puzzler

[Gordon Laco]

Hi Gang,

I hope you¹re all out sailing.... I stole Friday afternoon and yesterday to
do a quick overnighter up the coast.  Had a wonderful trip.

This afternoon I¹ve been making a determined assault on the annoying issue
SURPRISE¹s engine has;  namely it¹s dislike of running while the fuel
selector is set to Tank 2.

It runs fine on Tank 1, but when the selector is set to 2 it runs for only a
few minutes then cuts out and won¹t restart.   When I put the selector back
to Tank 1, it starts again after a lot of cranking...but at first only with
the choke on (it gets over that quickly).

When it stalls while running on tank 2, here¹s fuel in the fuel filter, so I
think it¹s getting gas.   If the carb were getting blocked, it wouldn¹t
start again on either tank without a carb cleaning job, but it doesn¹t need
that.

When the problem first manifested, it was stalling on either tank, but after
I¹d followed Don Moyer¹s advice and retightened all fuel line hose clamps,
the problem was resolved with regard to 1, but the issue still exists with
2.

It¹s occurred to me that there could be water in the fuel in 2; so I¹ve been
putting fuel line antifreeze in to absorb it.... But it occurs to me that if
contaminated fuel were the issue, I¹d have to clean the carb before it would
run again and so long as I switch to 2 that doesn¹t happen.

The weird thing is it ran quite happily on either for many years before this
started happening last season.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Gord #426 Surprise