spudulike

I do a bit of logging for my wood burner and a fair bit of saw servicing. For the logging - A saw:thumbup: Files, flat and round plus a file guide and gauge Scwrench (screw driver/wrench) Fuel mixing container Funnel Two stroke oil Chain oil Axe for splitting Saw horse - nice to get logs at the right height and held safely Helmet with ear and eye protection Steel toecaps - easy for an axe to glance off a log and take a toe off:blushing: Trousers - Gotta say I tend to wear them only when out in the field rather than cutting up logs on a saw horse in my own drive but thats my choice! I do wear gloves but more for protection from rough work rather than from the saw!

Never an issue and appreciation makes it worth it....cheers:thumbup:

Well thats me told, there are one or two on here that may disagree with you but everyone has a right to an opinion. I did try to answer your questions, a dry plug means you have no fuel, you need to inspect the insides of the carb to see if there is fuel in the diaphragm chamber, if there isn't then check the pumping section, if there is no fuel in there it is probably a tank vent or impulse problem, if there is fuel in the pumping section and not in the diaphragm chamber then it is probably a metering arm height issue. If there is fuel in the diaphragm chamber then the jet or fuel pickup hole in the carb may be blocked. I hope you follow me so far, you may get further info on my "Whats on your bench thread":001_rolleyes: Expert....Nah:001_rolleyes:

Here you go - Car Auto Moto Bicycle Repair Part Universal Spark Plug | eBay

I did find these oversize plugs on ebay once....from China....highest quality:lol: An option though:thumbup:

This is the type of repair I favour, helicoils are good if the part is tightened and isnt disturbed often, a sparkplug is reasonably often removed and is under extreme conditions of pressure and heat. I used aluminium inserts but had problems with them blowing out, What really works is cutting a real decent thread with a deccent tap and inserting a steel insert with a bit of loctite high temp / high strength thread lock - loctite 270 is good. The important bit is to get a deep well formed thread for the insert to key on. Cheap kits have poor taps and that forms a poor rounded thread and that will let an insert blow out!

Personally I reckon Stihl are attacking the largest UK online traders to the benefit of the smaller trader, guess they don't like online trade but thats the modern way to do business!

Well, the customer pays for the spares, nothing I can do about that and if they take longer to come in there is nothing I can do about that either:thumbdown: To put it in to context, the saws I am working on now came in late last week and now spares are on order and should get them finished late this week or over next weekend - I run a one to two week turn around, the stupid Stihl Policy may impact on this although my supplier says nothing will change:confused1:

Haven't checked for why it has seized but will obviously will pressure/vac test it and do a tach tune plus check the tank vents etc to make sure it doesn't happen again - will set it a bit fat to let the saw bed in:thumbup: The pot has a couple of scores, none are particularly deep and although they show on the pic, are nothing to worry about. Recently did an MS260 that I thought was borderline and it pulled 190psi - sort of changes your views on this sort of repair! The marks can't be felt and are out of the compression zone above the exhaust port so reckon it will make good compression and power - the look of the thing can be a bit unimportant and the engine doesn't SEE the marks but as long as a good seal is made, all will be good. The options are doing what I am doing (Meteor in the cleaned OEM cylinder), a damn expensive OEM cylinder/piston kit or a Chinese P&C kit...reckon this will give good life and decent power - local guy so will be able to keep and eye on it:thumbup:

Got a MS200T in with a "Loose exhaust":001_rolleyes: thought it would be a quick job:001_rolleyes: One thread was stripped, the other had a broken bolt in it, the hole on the left was tapped and had a new helicoil fitted - lovely job:thumbup: Tried drilling the broken bolt out and bingo - it has been helicoiled already. Any budding engineer will tell you that helicoils are stainless and therefore are a mare to drill out and almost impossible to re-tap:thumbdown: The drills kept wandering, even the posh colbalt ones I was using - £35 a set:blushing: and the hole got pretty crappy, wasn't sure I could pull this one off - a helicoil was out of the question so used a fancy M5 insert I had purchased for this sort of eventuallity - it is a 5mm internal hole so standard to the original bolt and the external was M8x1.25 - pretty large but the land around the hole was large enough - I put it in with some fancy Loctite high temp/high strength studlock and looks like nothing will shift it. Once screwed in, you bash in the tabs to lock the insert in place (see last pic for the finished job and a pic of the insert I used) - a nice job albeit a lengthy and difficult repair! A new fuel tank backplate has been fitted as the original has melted and fortunately the tank shows little heat damage!

Got an MS660 in, looks in little used condition but it has seized. The new piston is on order and have now cleaned up the bore - first pic before and second after:thumbup:

Busy weekend, MS180 which wasn't running right, took the carb off, cleaned it out, air filter was filthy, checked the piston, compression was 150psi:thumbup: reassembled and started and ran OK...no oil though! Checked the oiler pinion and the part the arm fits on to has worn away leaving the arm a loose fit on the pinion - new part on order and a common fault. Next up a Stihl 011. In good nick but the throttle cable had snapped. wanted to give it a going over anyway and sorted the recoil that was pretty ropey:lol:, fixed the stop switch, cleaned the carb out, pulled the clutch drum off as it had a piece of twine wrapped around it causing issues with the chain running all the time. The saw now starts sweetly and idles and revs fine - just need the throttle cable now. MS200T - full refurb needed - symptoms were it would idle but wouldn't rev out at all - pretty flat sounding - now reving out to 14KRPM and ideling spot on and looks a damn sight cleaner:thumbup:

I usually pull the things out with the tube method and then cut slots in them with a hacksaw - makes adjustment far easier!

Well Leon is Leon Wright, their Sales Manager - found that much out.....possibly something to do with the Arb show near Cirencester????

Going back to basics and not sure how much you know about small two strokes. The primer needs priming and 5 -10 pushes until there is fuel in it is fine. The choke needs pulling out, the off switch needs turning on and if there is a catch to open the throttle for starting then engage it, sometimes this is part of the carb choke mech. Pull the saw over fast until it coughs/fires or pops once. Take the choke off and pull again until the saw fires - this is generally 1-3 pulls. If this doesn't happen then an engine needs three basic things to run, compression, spark and fuel. Fuel should be present on the plug after around 5-8 pulls with the choke ON. Spark - if you take the plug off, push it back in to the cap and earth it on the cylinder AWAY from the plug hole (fuel can ignite - don't ask me how I know) and then pull the saw over and look for a spark - subdued light helps to see it. Other than that, you either need a compression tester or can try the poor mans method of lifting the saw with the starter cord and timing it to fall to full extension - 12-20 seconds is pretty good, anything around the 3-8 secs isn't. You could pull the muffler off and look at the piston through the exhaust port - any scoring and it is a bin job. FYI - the carb has a built in pumping section that uses the positive and negative pressue of the crankcase to move a pumping membrane in the carb to pump the fuel upwards out of the fuel tank and in to the carb - we cal this the impulse line!

You could try Mystic Meg:001_rolleyes: Not one of these quality Chinese machines is it:lol:

Reckon the existing Sales Manager has departed on the news of the face to face sales policy changes....."Challenging" is about right with the changes they are in the process of making:blushing: Hope they have downturned their UK sales budget by 30%

Not putting you off Andy but I am still waiting for a let up but it just isn't happening at the moment! Bear with me, it will happen, just don't know when:001_rolleyes:

Carb kits come in two flavours, full contains the needle, metering arm and welch plugs plus all the normal pumping and diaphragm parts and the Lite kit just has the diaphragm and pumping parts. An impulse line takes the positive and negative pressure of the crankcase and uses it to pump fuel up from the fuel tank by way of the pumping section of the carb and the fuel line connects the fuel tank to the carb and transfers fuel from the tank to ths carb but needs the impulse circuit as the fuel is generally held BELOW the carb:thumbup:

No flies on me M8:thumbup:

Well one of the well known Online Stihl spare stockists have told me that as an existing customer, I can still purchase from them from afar. I have no idea what Stihl are up to, is it some sort of strange marketing ploy, who knows:001_rolleyes: Times have changed - online sales have changed the way we shop hence the demise of the high street shops and why many of us rarely need to or want to drive to a dealer and order locally but do purchase online due to time consraints and ease of purchase, not forgetting the prices being competitive. We may find it is all a bad misconstrued plan but have a bad feeling that Stihl are just rubbish communicators and the new policy just hasnt reached some of the UK agents yet! Never underestimate how stupid our friends accross the channel can be:lol:

Was the horse still in the box for a face to face repair:001_rolleyes: 357XP has come of the rails - crank seal is leaking...bugger, another job to do. Another pile of kit arrived in today - two MS200Ts, a Stihl 011 and a MS180.....what a life....it never stops:lol:

The first one is lack of fuel, as Rich says, tank vent, possibly crap in the internal carb gauze filter, perished/soft or holed fuel line, gunked up fuel filter, cracked impulse line, worn pumping gasket in the carb, blocked jet in the carb due to crap in the diaphragm metering part of the carb..... The second one, try removing the plug and turn the saw so the plug hole is pointing downwards and pull the machine over - it is possible that the needle valve has leaked fuel in to the crankcase and is stopping the saw being pulled over. Other than that, the saw should pull over freely with the plug removed, if it doesn't, you may have something binding or seized bearing etc. The "Kickback" is down to the saw being old and probably having no decomp and the ignition timing being fixed rather than stepped as on later machines - it is normal for older saws to do this if not pulled over with conviction:blushing:

TBH I would put money on this being tired and stretched clutch springs allowing the clutch to engage at too low revs. All the tach will do is set the idle at the correct idle speed and if you have already lowered it to a point that the engine nearly stalls, it won't have the desired effect. If the engine continues to run with the brake on then there is no binding between the clutch drum and the crankcase! All points toward clutch springs IMO - under £5 to purchase and reasonably simple to fit!

Muffler mod now completed on the 357XP, all the porting now complete and just rebeveling the ports. Picture is for Martin the cake:lol: