2 Questions in one post: Overheating 2 stroke engine and environmetalists

[BaltimoreGS]

First the question I care about:  What does a 2 stroke engine due when it over heats?  My old Cub Cadet snow blower is getting used more in one week than it usually gets in one winter.  It started running rough Sunday and my first thought was the plug was fouling.  It seemed to run better with the choke half on so I rolled like that to finished my alley.  I picked up a new plug and stuck it in today and the little guy ran fine.  Looking at the old plug it didn't look too nasty as far as 2 strokes go.  Now I'm wondering if it ran rough because I was overheating the engine and running with the choke on richened the mixture enough to help cool it down.  Any thoughts?

And now the question I don't really care about but just feel like venting:  I have the local news on in the background as I was writing the above paragraph and some environmentalists are complaining because the state is dumping snow into the Chesapeake Bay.  I was under the assumption that our storm drains end up in the bay so wouldn't it ultimately end up in the bay anyway when it melts?  Anyone??

-Jessie

[TheGoodGuy]

second one is stupid.. unless there is more to the story like snow causes marine life to die

[spc]

Actually, the second point could be a viable gripe.  The snow itself and contacting surfaces that could be carried along with the snow in collection could have high levels of pollutants that would normally be filtered out by the aquifer.  I'm not saying this is the case or that the research has been done, merely that the potential for a significant ecological impact is present.

[TheGoodGuy]

Actually, the second point could be a viable gripe.  The snow itself and contacting surfaces that could be carried along with the snow in collection could have high levels of pollutants that would normally be filtered out by the aquifer.  I'm not saying this is the case or that the research has been done, merely that the potential for a significant ecological impact is present.

problem there is no aquifer in this case. Snow melt = runs into the storm water drains and runs into the bay as runoff. If it percolates then yeah it will clean the water. But as it stands under stand CERCLA street run off isnt a problem (oil) unless you have an NPDS issues.

[joshr08]

sounds to me as tho you may have mixed your gas rich cutting the air flow with the choke leans it out

[BaltimoreGS]

Wouldn't adding choke richen the mixture though (less air to same amount of fuel)?

-Jessie

[ver4]

I'll answer the second question to the best of my ability.

The Chesapeake waterway is slowly dieing because it lacks the filters (oysters and other aquatic animals) to clean the pollutants.  So when the snow is being dumped into the Bay, it's not just the snow, but all the chemicals that are on the roadways that are also being put into the Bay (oil, gas, antifreeze, etc.).  This will cause build up of Nitrogen and Phosphorus and can deplete dissolved oxygen levels, which would be fatal to an aquatic environment (plants and animals).  Of course, this happens anyways, but now it's more of a factor because of all the snow we are receiving.

[Adfalchius]

On the second question:

Apparently, the Department of the Environment gave a permit to dump and said "relatively clean snow removed from paved areas ... may be placed into large tidal water bodies (for example, Baltimore Harbor or the Potomac River near the Woodrow Wilson Bridge) without causing adverse environmental impact."

I can't find anything about environmentalists going berserk over this.  Maybe it's the salt in the snow?

http://mobile.baltimoresun.com/inf/infomo?view=top_stories_item&feed:a=balt_sun_1min&feed:c=topstories&feed:i=52125521&nopaging=1

[BaltimoreGS]

I'll answer the second question to the best of my ability.

The Chesapeake waterway is slowly dieing because it lacks the filters (oysters and other aquatic animals) to clean the pollutants.  So when the snow is being dumped into the Bay, it's not just the snow, but all the chemicals that are on the roadways that are also being put into the Bay (oil, gas, antifreeze, etc.).  This will cause build up of Nitrogen and Phosphorus and can deplete dissolved oxygen levels, which would be fatal to an aquatic environment (plants and animals).  Of course, this happens anyways, but now it's more of a factor because of all the snow we are receiving.

But back to my original question, doesn't the snow melting and going down the storm sewers (along with the salt and other stuff in it) ultimately end up in the bay too?  I remember when a hurricane came through in the late 90's and dumped a huge amount of rain in a short period of time.  That rain water flushed out all the crap people had dumped down the storm drains and it was all floating around the inner harbor the next day.  I was walking around taking in the spectacle wondering to myself, "How the hell do you fit couches (plural) in a storm drain?!?!"

-Jessie

[joshr08]

yeah im sorry i typed that in wrong this morning when i was up watching all the snow coming down .

[ver4]

\
But back to my original question, doesn't the snow melting and going down the storm sewers (along with the salt and other stuff in it) ultimately end up in the bay too?  I remember when a hurricane came through in the late 90's and dumped a huge amount of rain in a short period of time.  That rain water flushed out all the crap people had dumped down the storm drains and it was all floating around the inner harbor the next day.  I was walking around taking in the spectacle wondering to myself, "How the hell do you fit couches (plural) in a storm drain?!?!"

-Jessie

To be honest, I'm not too sure on how the sewage system works, so I can't give an answer on that.  I don't know if the water gets taken to a treatment plant first and then put back into the Bay or if it just runs off into the Bay with no treatment.  I could probably find out, but I'm not in the mood of doing too much work.

[PachmanP]

Maybe running it through the storm drain system normally allows the crap to settle out and dilute whereas just dumping it straight into the bay would produce a large concentration of salt and pollutants.  If I remember correctly, Boston piles their snow out somewhere instead of just dumping it into the bay for the same sort of reasons.

[bill14224]

To answer your first question, when a small engine overheats it usually seizes.  If you run it with the choke on until it's good and warm it will begin to run too rich.  Then the plug begin to foul and the engine will begin to run poorly.  You should turn-off the choke after the engine is running a couple minutes.  Snowblowers, especially 2-strokes, don't need choke for long.

I think what happened in your case is you got the snowblower hot enough so the carb got hot enough to not be able to atomize the fuel properly.  I had an old snowblower that used to act like that when I was a kid.  I'd let it cool-down for half an hour then it would run fine again.  It would overheat after about an hour or so blowing heavy wet snow.  Powder was no problem.

[BaltimoreGS]

Thanks for the input Bill, in hindsight I think it was over heating and I didn't realize it at the time.  It ran fine today.   Normally it only needs the choke for about 30 seconds when first started.  This much snow is rare around here, I think I was just too aggressive with the old thing   

-Jessie

[bill14224]

Yeah, don't get aggressive with the snowblower with heavy wet snow.

As for the environMENTALists, notice the emphasis on MENTAL, they will protest anything that works because they are ardent leftists who hide behind fuzzy animals to do their dirty socialist work.  The idea that dumping snow in the ocean will destroy the environment is laughable, or it would be if our opponents weren't so religiously serious about Man's destruction of the Earth.  We're part of nature, folks.  We're animals.  Thoughtful animals, but animals nonetheless.  Get over yourselves.

Ver4 is correct.  Things happen in the environment which cause oxygen levels in various waterways to drop at times, frequently causing kill-offs of fish.  We had a big one recently in NY and they can't explain why.  A large percentage of the fish we've stocked our waterways with just up and died.  More to the point they couldn't pin it on anything Man was doing.  Most of it has to do with decaying organic matter allowing massive plant growth in the water which leads to an increase in tiny animal life, which depletes oxygen, and that has almost everything to do with natural events and little to do with us.  It has everything to do with too much life going on at one time in one place and something has to give, but saying that gives environMENTALISTS a migraine.

Leftists will say I got my information from the right-wing blogosphere.  They would be wrong.  I got that information from Allegany State Park when I went camping last year.  When you take-in the big picture, Mother Nature is much more destructive to the environment than we are.  We can fight forest fires.  We can re-plant trees.  We can control erosion with our evil bulldozers.  We can breed fish and other wildlife to increase their numbers.  We don't cause lightning, (which causes forest fires) earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, mudslides, or hurricanes, all of which destroy the environment, or changes it, depending how you look at it.  Mother Nature doesn't care one way or the other.  She just goes with the flow, and she often delivers hardship, not caring a whit what we think about it.  Anyone who doesn't believe me can go hang-out in Haiti for awhile.  Saying that to environMENTALists makes their heads explode because it goes against everything their religion has taught them.  And yes, it's their religion.  That's why they won't listen to reason.

[BaltimoreGS]

On a local news station's website:  http://wbal.com/apps/news/templates/story.aspx?articleid=45619&zoneid=3

-Jessie

[ver4]

I didn't even think of increasing salinity levels, but apparently it doesn't matter, so maybe that's why I didn't think about it.

I'm glad I'm on top of this material since I major in Organismal Biology and Ecology. 

[PachmanP]

As for the environMENTALists, notice the emphasis on MENTAL, they will protest anything that works because they are ardent leftists who hide behind fuzzy animals to do their dirty socialist work.  The idea that dumping snow in the ocean will destroy the environment is laughable, or it would be if our opponents weren't so religiously serious about Man's destruction of the Earth.  We're part of nature, folks.  We're animals.  Thoughtful animals, but animals nonetheless.  Get over yourselves.

See you're inadvertently bringing up the problem with environmentalism. There's people who want to not shaZam! where we live and generally take care of the environment, so we don't end up in a toxic waste dump; and there are people who co-opt the previous desire in order to push an agenda and control people, but the second group works really hard to make it hard to tell the two apart.

There could be an effect of dumping the snow somewhere depending on the size and flow rate of the system (although Jessie's link says it's not a problem in this case), but "environmentalism" gets shoved down people's throats and causes an automatic gag reflex and is dismissed as hippy crap even if something is a legitimate issue.

People can seriously F up an environment; see China or Easter Island as examples. On the other hand, we can't just go to some sort of "Noble Savage" lifestyle where everyone poops rainbows.

[dauphinc]

First question. I work on two strokes so here's a few things to ponder. A:how are you
mixing the oil? Too rich? B. Your carb is dirty if it runs on half choke, causing it to
foul the plug. Clean out the carb well, get a rebuild kit, whatever. I have never seen a 2
stroke "overheat" and I live in Georgia. It being air cooled i take it, I'm sure the cold weather helps it to not do that. Hope this helps.

[BaltimoreGS]

It uses a 50:1 mixture which is the same as my chain saw so I keep a gallon mixed in the garage pretty much all the time.  I got plenty of practice with premix back in my motocross days.  The old plug wasn't fouled so that's what made me thinking something else was up.  Especially since it ran fine the next day.  Hopefully i won't really need it again this year, I'm tired of snow      I'll admit my maintenance on it has been pretty lax, I don't really pay it much attention until there is snow in the forecast 

-Jessie