Hi all - sorry in advance if this is a stupid question, I'm pretty green at this.

The backstory: last fall my mower suddenly stopped working without the choke - it would start fine, and then die as soon as the choke opened back up. Well, I finally got around to it this spring and the best advice I could find was to clean out the carb, which I did. Fuel gets into the carb from the tank no problem (with the float down, of course), and the main jet is clear, I confirmed that visually by actually seeing carb cleaner and compressed air going up into the air passage.

My problem is now that things are reassembled, no gas is getting into the carb. No here's the "stupid question" part - the inlet needle has one end that is conical, while the other end is just a nub. Which part goes up into the carb, and which end rests on the float? I can't find a diagram of the carb on the net to check, and it's one of those things I should have written down while I was taking it apart, but didn't. My thought was that I had something installed wrong and was running into some clearance issue where the bowl would push the float up and shut off the inlet orifice. Anyone have some insight on this? Thanks in advance.

http://www.honda-engines-eu.com/en/images/59139.pdf
He's some basic carb stuff. The Honda Europe site has most info and parts diagrams available.

Wow, that's really helpful. Thanks Homer. Judging by that diagram, I did put the inlet needle back in there wrong, which leads me to believe that there's some junk on the seat in there. That may be what was causing my problems in the first place.

there is a service bulletin for the gcv160 engine for hard starting/fouling spark plugs.there is an issue at times with the auto choke not opening all the way and also the linkage binding. not knowing your exact engine mod # I dont know if this is your issue or you have something else going on but its worth looking into .