If you allow it to thouroughly drain you should be fine. Perhaps drain it, fill it, cut the lawn then drain/refill again to be sure.

If I was going to drain, refill, and drain, I'd do it after a few minutes of running.

I be sure they drained thoroughly, refill with SAE 30 oil and don't worry about it. Do put an inline gas shut off valve on it and use it whenever engine is not running. Little remaining gas in crankcase will evaporate when engine warms up.

Walt Conner

Thanks all for your comments.

Walt, I had previously seen your advice on the fuel shut off. She's got a new one on her now.

Thanks again for the advice,
Paul

Walt, now I have a different, minor issue. The choke on the new carb is much different than on the old. The old choke was spring loaded and when you moved the throttle from choke to Fast, the spring load on the choke automatically reset.On the new carb, it is not spring loaded and has three different positions. The only way I have figured how how to move it is to manually do so or am I missing something? I can email you some pics. Haven't figured out how to load them here.

Thanks
Paul

What is the model of the engine and the part number of the carb you bought?

Baymee, don't have the model number handy but the invoice says the carb is Part number 698171.

I have attached a pic of what the choke looks like on the new carb

That's for a tractor motor, I believe. There are so many variations, that you should put this on the tractor forum of this section.

Thanks Baymee but you have some wrong info. It's a lawn mower with a 12.5 HP engine

So is a 12.5 HP mower engine smaller than a 10 HP tractor engine?
There's a point where there's a lot of crossover, so you can call that engine either one. It's a moot point.

A better response would have been the Model & Type numbers from the engine (as baymee requested) so one can look at the IPL for that SPECIFIC engine.
That way, you could have ordered the correct carb.

The carb you ordered fits "some" 28 series engines.