stihl ms440 shed find!!!!

[stewie]

I bought a seized 044 from ebay - fortunately found the cause was a failed piston ring so after a few evenings making sure I had fished all the bits out of the crank case I put it back together with a cheap chinese pot and piston and it's been running as my bandsaw mill powerhead for the past three years. At one point when the 066 wasn't working I stuck it on the Alaskan on a 36" bar and it did it, albeit slowly. A really solid workhorse of a saw in my opinion, and well worth fixing.

 

If it was mine, I'd get it clean, including service kit for the carb (from Rowena), buy the missing bits (wait until they come up cheap on ebay) and put it back together, then get it pressure and vacuum checked and the carb set up. In my case I would ask Spud to do this - posting it works fine if you're too far off to do it in person. You then find out whether the cause of failure was an air leak and get the tricky bits dealt with. If it's not an air leak, you can reasonably assume someone used neat fuel in it and carry on and use it.

 

Alec

 

 

Brilliant news!!!! Yeah im thinking the same about spud mate but not been on in a while and wasnt sure if he was still doing that type of work lol

 

Spud if you read this and your up for it the jobs yours mate!! You came to mine a while back with a bar for my stihl 041....

 

Alec out of interest what did you pay on the siezed saw?? And how much did it cost to fix it?? Thanks for all your help everyone......

[agg221]

Alec out of interest what did you pay on the siezed saw?? And how much did it cost to fix it?? Thanks for all your help everyone......

 

I wouldn't take my figures as typical - I'm not in a rush so I wait until something suitably priced shows up. I paid £98 for the saw and stuck a cheap (£45) pot and piston on - the cheapest I could find on ebay. I think I even stuck the original plug back in, it fired up and ran, so I left it alone!

 

It was before I had stripped a carb and to be honest before I had a good understanding of where air leaks came from. These days my approach would be a little more thorough, including the carb kit and a new plug.

 

In my case, the pot was unequivocally shot, due to lumps of piston ring being embedded in it. In your case, I would take the piston out and see if the plating is damaged in the bore. If so, replace; if not, clean it up and put a rather better quality piston in, such as a Meteor.

 

Since I did mine, I have picked up two secondhand OEM pot and piston sets for 044s. Both have one lug of the pot cracked off, but I can weld this back together. I think I paid about £15 each inc. p&p, but I took a chance there was nothing else wrong, and am able to carry out the repair.

 

I think Spud is away at the moment, but he's still very much in business so far as I'm aware. Probably worth dropping him a PM.

 

Alec

[stewie]

I wouldn't take my figures as typical - I'm not in a rush so I wait until something suitably priced shows up. I paid £98 for the saw and stuck a cheap (£45) pot and piston on - the cheapest I could find on ebay. I think I even stuck the original plug back in, it fired up and ran, so I left it alone!

 

It was before I had stripped a carb and to be honest before I had a good understanding of where air leaks came from. These days my approach would be a little more thorough, including the carb kit and a new plug.

 

In my case, the pot was unequivocally shot, due to lumps of piston ring being embedded in it. In your case, I would take the piston out and see if the plating is damaged in the bore. If so, replace; if not, clean it up and put a rather better quality piston in, such as a Meteor.

 

Since I did mine, I have picked up two secondhand OEM pot and piston sets for 044s. Both have one lug of the pot cracked off, but I can weld this back together. I think I paid about £15 each inc. p&p, but I took a chance there was nothing else wrong, and am able to carry out the repair.

 

I think Spud is away at the moment, but he's still very much in business so far as I'm aware. Probably worth dropping him a PM.

 

Alec

 

Thankyou very much for all that info mate....all taken on board.....

 

Ill strip the pot down when i get more time to play with it and get some pics up again!!!!

 

Thanks again

[tommer9]

The o44 looks like a chip fat special judging by the state of the fins......probably why it seized up. if you run veg oil instead of chain oil you have to be on top of the maintainance or they do seize.

Of course, i could be totally wrong