oh man need a quick answer,,, anyone there???carb??

been out playing in the snow in ny like most of everywhere it seems, we are getting seems like almost 2" an hour,, did my drive, up by my barn, and the neighbors place too, all was going great, was finishing up one last pass, of course by the house for the woodshed,,, well,,the tractor started slowing,, and then blowing black smoke,, still chuggin, and I tryed to throttle, nothing,, tried to throttle manually by carb still nothing then it died,, I noticed the carb was iced over from snow,covered totally,, and the distributer too, front mount 40 9n,, do you think that the carb froze up on it,, i am goingf out in a few minutes\1\2 hour,but mine does not like to start right off when flooded or stalled,,, finicky,,, black smoke almost like it was choked too much, any help,, I know this is not a chat line but ya never know if anyone is on thanks pat

The ice forms inside the venturi of the carb due to the latent head of vaporization of the fuel. The tractor normally combats this with heat from the exhaust manifold, but the effectiveness is limited. This problem is worst when the temp is just below freezing and the humidity is high.

Go in the house, get a 3 gallon pail of hot water, pour it on the carb slowly. Try to get the whole carb warm without splashing any more water on your ignition system. Don't get too much water too quickly on the hot exhaust manifold.

The carb ice will melt and the resulting water will run out the bottom. I bet it will start and run.

Good luck and have a great holiday!