Looks like there is more playng up then I thought. Both ways too. I must be in fools paradaise with my 2 successes. Interesting that some give trouble after quite a while as well.
I was using this stuff for fuel hose. Its yellow and supposed to be for fuel. Only thing I can say is its a bit hard to pull off after its been on a while. I can see the bubbles quite clearly at least while its new.
I really appreciate for thoughts and comments. With this design,"Needle Spring Lever" is a great solution but I found there is much better design and approach which I prefer to manufacture. It's easy to manufacture and to form than a wire spring. Once fitted, it even holds the float and needle in place from falling off. This time, I used a 0.2mm brass shim formed into a metering lever or a needle valve lever as a prototype. Same idea with the wire spring but slightly more rigid to hold the needle crown head. I welcome your thoughts and comments. Please see attached photos of the prototype and my hand written design measurements.
Haha yes it's an old school style drawing. I really like to put my thought into paper in drawing or calculation which feedback into my brain for better understanding and processing. When it's manufactured and tested, I will leave it to NormK for failure rates. He is very good in working out with failure rates. lol.
Brilliant work there, I admire your dedication.My concern is what numbers you would have to get made compared to the potential sales. My problems with the sticking needles is not a high percentage but it is very annoying when it happens and most people would never realize that a sticking needle was the cause of their mower not starting. Then we have the problem that we are on the wrong end of the Victa sales boom. Numbers will continue to reduce from here on.
Well The Carby, Wow you have done it. I just hope you get enough customers to cover costs... Guess you need the metal needle so it can hook up to. I think most mower shops would tell customers their PTs are not fixable and point them to a new 4 stroke. good luck speedy
........................Keep your blades sharp......................
Yes Speedy that is the issue, I'm getting to need another 100 needles but at the moment the supply of PT's I am coming across have dropped off this year , numbers are well down.
Time to drag some out of the dud pile then NormK. I find it surprising that a much heavier metal needle continues to stick upward when plenty of the feather light original plastic needles do not. Maybe the needle and seat need to be looked at and micro changes experimented on.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
MF, my dud pile is very short on pull starters and then I still have a problem of not enough chassis for the running motors I have and then the real problem is wheels
Contact me If you needs a handful quantity of needle supply and I will give you 20% less than anyone or any parts you need. You knew my number.
Hi NormK, Speedy Mower freak,
The love of these Victa 2-Stroke for me to develop a solution to keep these remaining masterpiece going for years not only for me but for everyone who loves the Victa 2-Stroke. NormK, this year the number of units drops in your area maybe because you fixed lots of them properly and didn't come back. You can only see in your area but in our sales record, surprisingly we have customers buying these Victa parts from UK, NZ and all over Australia and even some mower shops. I really thanks them and you guys for accepting the design. There are still lots of these units around. In sales point of view, sometimes you don't mind about profit margin and even break even is acceptable just in order to cater more product range for the convenience of the customers to shop in one store. Some. Seller they don't care selling doggy products like the black/yellow aftermarket plastic needle as long as they make profits and don't care about after sales. When I sell something, I don't feel comfortable when I knew that the part I sold will likely to have some issue especially the needle. I don't hold the patent nor violating a patent because it's totally new design or changes to the existing design. It won't cost me for the tooling and final CAD design because I don't hold the parent and the manufacturer is free to sell and distribute the products but I have to initially make the volume order of 1000 to 5000 quantity. I'm happy to keep the parts on stock for a long term supply and fix. I'm not only designing, selling parts but also fix some mowers for customers outside of my full time job. When I started selling parts and fix mower, It's very frustrating when you can't buy directly from big distributor in Morebank (You knew what I mean) because you need a shop front to qualify. I don't have and only have backyard repair. Because of this, I design, modify and improve my own parts and manufacture so I can fix my Victa 2-Stroke and sell the parts.
I’ll probably buy some just to try them, even though the 4 machines I use regularly all have metal needles in them and start and run well. I have had an issue or two with the metal needle, but since then I have tried paying attention to how the needle goes in to the primer face in relation to the 3 ribs running down the side of it. It’s hard to explain, but if I had them installed with one of the ribs pressing directly against the side of the primer face, it would stay straighter and slide up and down easier. It seemed the action of the float could make the needle go up and down on a slight angle in the primer face if it was oriented without a rib facing as I described above. This was with the primer cap off the machine, having a look at the cap, needle and float moving. I’m sure it would move when is use anyway. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone.
I had another one stick this morning in the Powertorque 24 I set up a few weeks ago. No way could I shake the needle loose with tapping on the carby. Pulled the primer cap off , took the needle out and put it back together and it started straight up, so I am waiting on giving these needle springs a try, if they work as they should it is going to make a lot of Victa owners happy again
As promised, this design will go on production. The unit selling price I expect to be less than half of the Viton Tip needle price. I can even include 1 free for complete rebuild kit. I will keep the Viton Tip needle design to maintain the sealing quality that you can even leave the tap open as long as you like without flooding. Obviously we need this new lever design to pull the needle out when float drops. Without the lever, there's a high chances that the needle will sticked in when the mower will sit in the shed for months with less or no fuel or even with fuel where the lower part of the valve will dry up and the Viton Tip will bind to the seat. We can't tell customer to keep banging the primer cap when mower doesn't starts. We want the mower starts all the time we need they need it even sitting in the shed for months. When the carby venturi and spark plug are always dry with enough fuel in the reservoir, the mower will always starts all the time.
Something I don't normally do is turn the fuel off to run the mower out, maybe this can be part of the problem by having fuel in the float bowl holding the needle in the up position and then it sticks in the seat
I have a Victa leaflet from the 70s saying not to do this. Yet some people say it's the best thing to do before putting it away. I have always gotten by not doing it.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
I do a mix of the two methods. I put it at idle for a minute after mowing to cool things off a bit, then turn the fuel tap off with the engine running. After 20-30 seconds, it will begin to gain revs - I immediately shut it down. As can be expected, after that it would rev up and down for another 15 seconds and rev its head off at the end.
I got into this habit because my grey Standard 2 is picky with shut down procedure. If I leave the carby full, it will take at least 6 pulls in 2 weeks time when its next started. It will go first or second with either running completely or mostly out of fuel.
You have the point here. Sticking needle likely to happen when mower is left sitting for a while the reservoir or bowl is full with fuel prior for storage which always keep the float up and putting sligh pressure to the valve. When the lower part or the Viton Tip dried up, it may likely to stick to the seat. If this is the case, this can be prevented by closing the fuel tap and running the engine until it stop prior for storage. Means the needle will drops.
I haven't seen and read the leaflet or user instruction guide but it make sense with plastic needle that it's a good practice to turn off the fuel tap and run the engine until it stops since the plastic needle can't completely shut off the valve unlike the viton tip needle. When this happens during the storage, it will floods the chamber before overflow depends on horizontal alignment whether the overflow is higher than the jet. This is not the case with viton tip since viton tip can completely shut off the valve but NormK has point out with sticking needle when reservoir or bowl is full prior for storage. With the newly design needle spring lever, it will address all this issue and closing the fuel tap or leaving it open is not applicable anymore means you can do either way.
G-day Carbymaster, Tyler, speedie & NormK, I hope this finally addresses the needle once and for all and results in the holy grail of a trouble free G4-LM series plastic carburettor. Hoard those bits as even 40 years of production can deplete if people keep disposing of their two strokes en masse. We need to spread the gospel that the Victa two stroke need not be marred by a 1cm component!
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
