Gday learned people. My wife bought me a brand new 50th Anniversary 2 stroke back in 2003. It has served me well but now is starting to play up. I must admit that I have limited experience with 2 stroke mower engines and have pretty much neglected the mower with only the original plug being cleaned and the blades replaced once and the air filter cleaned with a air compressor.
The mower is getting harder to start with the usual way of late being to press the primer 3 times, setting the throttle to flat out and pulling on the starter about a dozen times. Anything else will not work.
Once the engine starts, it blows smoke and heaps of it! In fact, I reckon it now blows heaps of smoke all the time. This happens despite me mixing Caltex 2 stroke oil(200ml to 5 Lites petrol).
On occasions, the engine struggles to get up to maximum revs. Sometimes when it does, it makes a pinging sound like it is detonating.
I will admit that I have used ethanol blended petrol in this but I've been using standard unleaded for the last 5 or so months.
With these things in mind, what would be the most likely problem/s?
