Never has there been a bigger thorn in my side than my grandfather's Mantis tiller. It has the Echo 2-cycle engine everyone says is awesome and a bulletproof gear box, yet his chews up carburetors. It has gone through 3 C1U-K54A carburetors in the span of 6 years. The factory carb lasted 3 years and to my dismay, I couldn't get it to idle after rebuilding it. Plug a new one onto it and away it went. Got 2 years out of the replacement and same issue. I bought the $8 rebuild only to find I can't get it to idle properly. The third... you see the trend here.
I decided to bypass that amalgamation of low quality plastic and high quality aluminum and go all aluminum. I plunked down less than half the money of the Mantis factory carburetor and spent the evening putting a C1U-K68 carburetor on it. How does it fit? The primer bulb is upside down and I had to take the butterfly/throttle linkage off the old carb and put it on it, but it has never run so well. Throttle response is phenomenal and it revs up like a well tuned chainsaw. I never was able to get the same response with the C1U-K54A. There was always hesitation at the bottom end.
If anyone is interested, I can take pictures/video of the final product since I didn't bother to take shots or video of my rebuild. I also have a customer that wants me to work on their Mantis despite the fact I told them they are my kryptonite. I may do the same with theirs since the problem is essentially a new carburetor from what they describe.
I decided to bypass that amalgamation of low quality plastic and high quality aluminum and go all aluminum. I plunked down less than half the money of the Mantis factory carburetor and spent the evening putting a C1U-K68 carburetor on it. How does it fit? The primer bulb is upside down and I had to take the butterfly/throttle linkage off the old carb and put it on it, but it has never run so well. Throttle response is phenomenal and it revs up like a well tuned chainsaw. I never was able to get the same response with the C1U-K54A. There was always hesitation at the bottom end.
If anyone is interested, I can take pictures/video of the final product since I didn't bother to take shots or video of my rebuild. I also have a customer that wants me to work on their Mantis despite the fact I told them they are my kryptonite. I may do the same with theirs since the problem is essentially a new carburetor from what they describe.
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