If you've varnished the carb because it's set for a long time with gasoline in, you may need to tear that down and rebuild it.
I hope not, it hasn't set too long, maybe two weeks, but we've had humidity and rain the whole time. My best guess rn is that there's too much water in the carb.
I think it is an auto choke, Briggs n stratton, cheap model
Two weeks is nothing, I'm talking all winter. If it's seen any kind of water exposure, then your diagnosis is probably correct.
All modern mowers have an automatic choke, they hold closed during cranking and then open against a spring when then engine is running. Honda decided to be fancy - they use a wax pellet inside the carb to open and close the choke, as it warms up it's supposed open the choke and keep the engine running. It doesn't work well sometimes and cold starts can be difficult because as soon as the engine starts, you should open the choke and it takes time for this wax pellet to melt. Once things get out of tolerance a bit, you take the carb apart, clean it, re-adjust, or simply replace. That's why they're so cheap on Amazon, it's almost a spark plug replacement level.
When I took mine back to the dealer, they tried to tell me that these mowers aren't designed for ethanol enriched gasoline, you need to use only pure gasoline. That's great for any place that isn't the United States, but mine always built up sludge in the jets, probably from the ethanol.
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