Your Tiller Won't Start for Dummies

air filter

A lot of general knowledge is pretty much cross-transferable. If you can build a bird house, for instance, you can probably build a dog house; if you can bake bread then biscuits are most likely within your reach. Lack of knowledge is, apparently, equally cross-transferable... take eHow.com's Patrick Nelson, who's already proven ignorant of how power tools work. From the looks of his post "How to Get a Garden Tiller to Start,"¹ Patrick's also ignorant of small gasoline engines...

Like many an eHowian without a clue, our four-time winner – a design school grad – simply went to the owner's manual for a specific tiller (in this case, Troy-Bilt; a good choice). His problem, of course, is that maintenance tips for one brand aren't necessarily good for another. Besides, Nelson seems to have dug up some bull on his own from another, unnamed source. That, apparently, is where he came up with maintenance "tips" like these:

"...gasoline can turn varnish-like when left for more than a month." "Remove the air filter cover and identify the two parts usually there: a foam pre-filter and a paper filter." "Set the [spark plug] gap to the manufacturer's specifications before you install it by inserting a gap tool and knocking the head on a hard surface to close the gap..." Ummm, no, Patrick, those are wrong:

1. Gasoline that's more than six months or so old can cause varnish-like deposits on engine parts, but it doesn't "turn varnish-like" in just "a month"!
2. Ummm, Patrick -- only a few tiller models have both "a foam pre-filter and a paper filter." Many have only a foam filter.
3. "[Knock] the head on a hard surface to close the gap"? Are you nuts, Patrick? In the first place, you don't adjust the gap with the gauge still in the plug; and second, you don't pound the plug on a hard surface to reduce the gap, you gently bend the electrode.

Nelson never mentions the fuel system, especially the carburetor, and his instructions simply say, "Put the engine throttle control lever into the 'Start' position if the garden tiller still won't start." Ever heard of a choke, Patrick? We didn't think so -- and having the gall to try to troubleshoot a gasoline engine with so little knowledge is just one reason why you're the Dumbass of the Day... again.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_8147403_garden-tiller-start.html

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