Two-Cycle Carburetors for Dummies

Two-stroke carburetor

If you, like our founder, got your first driver's license sometime before about 1980, you have almost certainly driven a car with a carburetor. If you car was really "hot," you might have had a two- or even four-barrel "carb." Nowadays, fuel injection rules for motor vehicles, and carburetors now are mostly found on gasoline-powered tools like lawn equipment, generators or compressors. Lawn equipment tends to have two-stroke (aka two-cycle) engines; engines that mix lubricating oil with gasoline instead of having a separate oil reservoir. Sadly, eHowian Alibaster Smith (there's that fake name again!) seems to be completely unaware of the difference between two- and four-cycle engines, which is made obvious in his post "How a 2-Stroke Carburetor Works" at ItStillRuns.com. But, then, we already knew that...

The short answer is, "just like a four-stroke carburetor, Dummy!" When you come right down to it, Alibaster managed to cobble together a reasonably accurate description of how carburetors work (with some needed "tweaks" outlined below), but what caught our researcher's attention in this article is the statement,

two-barrel carburetor

"A 2-stroke or double barrel carburetor works the same way that a basic carburetor works, except that more air and gasoline can be pushed into the engine because there are more barrels or tubes and thus, more airflow...."

Wait, what? this dumbass has conflated a two-stroke carburetor with a two-barrel carburetor? Better not tell Holley or Edelbrock! Obviously, all of Smith's fellow financial planners stick with Bimmers and Lexi... Not content to merely start with a resoundingly stupid claim like that, Alibaster goes on to explain the various functions of a carburetor, which he likens to "a tube." Yeah, sure... Smith claims that

"Only a small amount of gasoline, about 10mg per combustion stroke, is needed to make a typical 4-stroke combustion engine run": Perhaps true, but you're supposed to talk about 2-stroke engines, 'Baster! "...if you are trying to start a cold engine, you may have a hard time getting the air and fuel to mix properly because of certain variables inherent in the properties of gasoline and air...": You gotta love weasel phrases like "certain variable inherent..." "...cold gasoline does not vaporize as readily and tends to condense on the walls of the carburetor.": No it typically condenses within the intake manifold, which is not the same thing as the carburetor -- dumbass.

Not only does Alibaster demonstrate manifold ignorance of internal combustion engines, he never actually gets around to mentioning just what the difference is between 2-stroke and 4-stroke carburetors: almost nothing, except that the jets on 2-strokes are different because of the viscosity differences between pure gasoline and a gas-oil mixture. Alibaster, we suspect, had no idea of this important distinction; and that's why he's our Dumbass of the Day, carburetor division, for the second time... in a week.

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