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I recently purchased an old Hustler with a CCW 340 . Overall it runs well, but it does not like to start, especially when cold, and seems to have an odd way of settling down to idle. The previous owner told me that he thought the carb needed cleaning and he was using starting fluid to start it. A quick shot of starting fluid and it fires right up, without it I don't think it would start when cold.
I pulled the Zenith Bendix carb off and it is fairly simple and easy to clean. It also appeared to be pretty clean in the first place. I put it back together and really didn't see any significant difference. Still doesn't want to start when cold (or really even just having sat for a little while. Also, it doesn't always want to idle down well, it often will stay idling high and will slowly drift down to only sorta high. The integrated throttle return spring seems to work very well, and the previous owner added an additional return spring likely trying to resolve the same issue. I don't believe that it is hanging up. It tends to idle high enough were the clutches are spinning, which isn't optimal.
My current thought is that there must be a vacuum leak, which is a bigger problem when the choke is on, and which causes it to idle high. I am quite confident that the carburetor itself and the carburetor-to-intake gaskets are not the problem. I therefor thinking it is either the intake that splits the single carb for the 2 cylinders, or that it is a leak in the crankshaft seal. I intend to start it and spray some carb cleaner around the potentially offending areas and see if the RPMs increase, indicating a leak. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to try this yet.
I do not have much experience with older 2 cycle motors, so I am very interested in other peoples ideas of what may be causing this. I would really like to get this to start easily and drive well.
Here are a couple of videos with it running last weekend. You can here how high it idles (I can't adjust it to idle lower, it will just suddenly drop down too low and die). You can also see in the second video my tendency to hit the brake to put a little load on the motor to cause it to idle down farther.
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