When you go to start it does it crank and crank and you get nothing, does it papump, papump and not catch or does it crank and stop or does it do absolutely nothing when you turn the key?

It cranks and cranks and does nothing. I've sprayed carb cleaner and it tries to start. After the carb cleaner is burned back to just crank and crank.

Thank you.
Charles

It may be helpful to post the brand & model# of the "machine" so one can get a look at the bigger picture.

Does the carb have a fuel cut off solenoid?
IF so, does it click when you turn the key ON/OFF?

Is the throttle linkage causing the choke to fully close when at the extreme position?

Normally, this time of the year I'd say your carb is gunked up from bad gas stored over the winter, but you said the problem started last year.
That leads me to suspect the throttle cable may have "slipped" a bit.

This post was edited by bill_kapaun on Mon, Mar 31, 14 at 14:10

It's a Cub Cadet GT1554VT with a B & S Model #44P777 engine.

Here's what I did this morning. Drained all the gas, checked all fuel lines, same result. Gave the carb a tap with the rubber end of my needle-nosed pliers and to my surprise it started. Sounds a little rough at idle, but I'm going to reassemble and see what happens.

Bill, it does have the solenoid and yes I can hear it click. I have a mark I painted on my cable so I don't think it's slipped. I'm going to run some Seafoam and see how that goes.

Any ideas about the rough idle?
Thanks everyone
Charles

Let the fuel treatment do its job and see if the idle clears up.
Vacuum leaks in the carb/intake system will have the greatest effect at idle.

You might remove to air cleaner and visually confirm that the choke butterfly is fully closing. It only takes a couple minutes and the price is right.

Sounds like it needs fuel system clean up as suggested. Do you run ethanol in it? SGE's that set over winter (takes 3 or 4 years to build up some times) all experience this sooner or later. To prevent this don't let them set for months at time and routinely treat the gas with fuel treatment especially if all you can get is ethanol gas.

The rough idle IMO from small passages gummed up or maybe the main jet that Bayless talks about all the time. Hopefully fuel treatment will dissolve the gummed up passages and you won't have to disassemble the carb. to clean them out or at least take the fuel bowl off and spray what passages you can see from the top and bottom.

If you do take the fuel bowl off just make sure you get the 0-ring seated correctly or it will dribble gas out the sides of the fuel bowl and be fire hazard.