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Sparks Flying Out The Muffler?


Tom_Byrne

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This is a new one on me: Was running the tractor with the 10 HP Kohler K241 tonite. I had it in low gear with the trottle at about 3/4. I looked down at the muffler and little tiny sparks were flying out! Any clues?
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Carbon deposits build up over time and combined with o2 burn out when the airflow shakes them loose. Also particles of rust do the same thing.
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Tom, Dave is correct. I have seen that same phenomenon on nearly all of my tractors during night operations. It is either carbon particles coming out of the engine, or glowing rust particles coming out of the muffler. You may also notice a nice eering glow coming from your muffler. I have had some machines that almost had a see-thru muffler at night, especially with one of the small can mufflers on it. I could actually make out the outline of the internal baffles thru outside of the muffler at night. On one tractor I could see a 4 inch flame coming out of the pipe when mowing at full throttle after dark. You can't see any of these things in the day time. Strange things things happening when the sun goes down.
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Tom, Mercury marine has an engine cleaner called powertune to help remove carbon deposits. It works really well, and it is the best carb cleaner you can buy. I have been using it for about 14 years now and havent found anything even close to it. 2-3 hours soaking and all the brass parts will look like new.
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Safety Note: This is why I tell my kids not to drive any running Lawn Tractor into the hay barn where the keep their exta equipment, nor start one up in there. One spark is all it would take to ignite all that dry hay.
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quote:
Originally posted by SmilinSam
Safety Note: This is why I tell my kids not to drive any running Lawn Tractor into the hay barn where the keep their exta equipment, nor start one up in there. One spark is all it would take to ignite all that dry hay.
very good point sam!
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Thom, I was at Old Dominion Speedway one night, watching a Legends race from the pits. I noticed that on one of the cars the header was glowing cherry red all the way from the head to the collector on all four cylinders. I would have also thought it was due to an extremely lean carb setup, except that this car finished 4th out of an 18 car field. Since that is basically a box stock class that requires serial number verification on all parts, it is hard to believe the engine could make that much power if it were running lean enough to heat up the header that way. The other thing was that those engines run a carb on each cylinder and the pipes from all cylinders were glowing red. Just made me wonder what was really causing that pipe to heat up. I told the driver about it after the race. His comment was: "I don't care what the header looks like, as long as the car runs as good as it did tonight".
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Tom: Other than random sparks from loose carbon/rust, the only time I've seen a significant amount of sparks was, as has been mentioned, when the engine ran real lean during a carb malfunction. As that can ruin your engine, you should probably double-check your mixture settings. Good luck, Peter
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