Fixing A Stihl Chainsaw That Won't Stay Running

it's not very often that you find a machine worth fixing but when you do it's very refreshing take this Chainsaw for example it's been around for a very long time cutting its fair share of down Limbs and maybe a fence post or two and until recently it was working very well it's now needing a bit of attention and then hopefully it'll be right back into service otherwise they might have to consider a new saw after Decades of reliable service in today's video we're going to be looking at this steel chainsaw and the problem is is that according to my coworker who I got it from says it starts but it won't stay running now just to make sure I did try to start it in front of them when they gave it to me and it was doing exactly what they said it was doing now I am going to try and repair this chainsaw but yours might be a little different so this might not work on yours and if things are not working out for you lik in the video please ask about it I'll be glad to answer your questions now these chainsaws are at least in my opinion one of the best ones you could get at the time when it was released decades ago but some would say that the newer ones are just a little bit better better but whatever your opinion is let's at least agree that this is a very good saw to have and use now chainsaws are one of the most abused machines I deal with so before I go too far I want to see if this one is worn out and the easiest way to gauge whether it is is to slowly pull on the rope and feel how much the engine is fighting back and by how much this one is resisting me I'd have to say for its age it's fighting back quite a bit what this tells me is that the engine is not worn out and in fact it's very healthy which is pretty amazing considering its age and one of the main reasons why it's lasted this long would be making sure the oil and gasoline is being mixed according to the instructions and having known the person who owns the saw for over two decades I'm very certain that their fuel is fresh and mixed like it should be so I'm not concerned the fuel is a factor in this issue now before I touch this chainsaw anymore you can see that it's completely covered in years of dirt and oil so I'm going to give it a quick spray and rinse and I hate to say it but this one is going to be a bit of a challenge because of its age but it just means it's going to be a a lot more satisfying than normal now you can use whatever cleaner you want but I'm going to be using a concentrated Degreaser that means I have to be careful and I can't leave it on there too long otherwise it might start to damage certain parts I'm also using a paint sprayer with clean water to help rinse off all the Degreaser and any dirt but a garden hose works well just be very careful while you spray the water now the reason I'm using a paint sprayer is because it doesn't use a lot of water whereas the garden hose will quite literally drench the machine which can lead to some issues later on just remember to keep the water away from the carb and Muffler area otherwise water could get into the engine and damage it now because of the age of this chainsaw and because it's been used so much I'm going to take off The Recoil assembly to give it a good cleaning this is something that I don't always do and that's because most saws that I work on are not all that old and have not been used all that much this one however is very different and because it's been so reliable it's been used more than your average chainsaw I'm also under the belief that older saws seem to oil their chains a lot better than the newer ones that of course leads to a better performance from the chainsaw and also makes it last a lot longer whereas it seems the newer ones are a bit stingy when it comes to oiling now with all that extra oil it of course means the older saws seem to be covered in bar oil and dirt so cleaning it once in a while will help out and as you can see this one is not any different because under that cover for The Recoil it looks like fresh asphalt now this one is going to take quite a bit of degrees in to cut through all that oil and in reality it took three rounds of applications to get it looking somewhat decent of course the other side of the recoil with the flywheel and the ignition coil located at also looks just as bad and is going to require multiple rounds of cleaning to make it look halfway decent now after you're done spraying it down with about 5 gallons of water you're going to need to let it dry off as much as possible but if you're short on time then using some compressed air or even a leaf blower will help out in getting most of the water off the machine now if you are wor worried about getting certain parts wet and damaging it you're welcome to try and cover what you can with plastic before you start cleaning it also if your machine did start before cleaning you might want to check and make sure that it still starts after the cleaning otherwise you might have more to fix than just the carb so knowing that it still works would be nice now I'm not going to bother and put the recoil back on just yet instead I'm going to get down to the carb and take it off for an inspection and since we know the engine does start and run it means we have plenty of compression from the engine and also a working ignition system system that pretty much leaves us with either the fuel in the tank or something else in the fuel system that's keeping it from running like it should now be extremely careful when dealing with the style of Choke system I'm not very fond of this style and maybe it's because of a hard time dealing with it but chances are pretty good that if I have a hard time with it you're probably going to as well now once the linkage for the choke is finally out of the way we can then slide the carb off the studs and then start our inspection now after taking off the single bolt and remove moving the cover we can see the round Inlet screen in the body of the carb now the first thing we need to make sure is that it's clear of any debris which ours is but if yours is covered it means your fuel filter has come off the fuel line inside the tank so what you're looking at is the pumping diaphragm and I plan on reusing it but to do that we just need to make sure these two flaps are not bent out of shape now luckily this one is just fine but if yours are bent you might want to consider replacing the entire carb now you can get a rebuild kit for the carb if you want to but your chances of success are better if you just buy a new carb instead the next item I want to inspect is the metering diaphragm and it's located under this metal plate now the diaphragm is supposed to move back and forth regulating fuel flow through the car but to do that it needs to be flexible which this one is however this one is slightly crooked which is affecting the way it works so replacing it is a good idea now it is quite a shame that we have to replace it because it's still working quite well so does it mean we don't have to replace it then well if you're in a Crunch and can't replace it then yes you can reuse it but you might have to do a lot of tuning to get around the issue with the diaphragm I do want to check and see if fuel will pass through the screen after pressing on the rocker arm on the back side of the carb and as you just saw it did now if yours does not disappear through the screen it means you'll have to clean the screen with carb cleaner until it does the next item we need to take care of is taking out the fuel adjustment screws but before we can take them out we need to count how many turns it takes to get them to stop turning now doing it this way will allow us to put the screws back in where we found them once the carb has been cleaned in the Ultrasonic Cleaner so what would happen if you forgot to count how many turns it takes to get them to stop well if that happens I would just choose to turn them out two full turns as a baseline to start from now unfortunately this will make tuning the carb for good fuel delivery just a bit harder to do but it's not impossible it just means it'll take a little bit more time to tune the car but if you knew what the settings were to begin with it would shorten that time quite considerably so if you've been watching my video videos for the last 3 months or so you'll know that I've been trying to use this Ultrasonic Cleaner as much as I can and so far I think it's done a pretty good job of cleaning the carbs on the outside but as far as cleaning the carbs on the inside well that's still up for debate next we can start to put the carb back together again now it was only after I got it out of the cleaner that I noticed that I had not taken out the needle and rocker arm so does that mean the carb didn't get clean then well it could be but to be honest it's really up to you to decide if you really need to take it completely apart to get it cleaned and since this carb seemed to be working just fine as far as letting the engine start and idle I'm pretty sure not taking it apart all the way we'll be okay however if the engine was not starting and your testing showed that the carb was the issue then yes taking the carb completely apart would be very necessary and after installing the fuel adjustment screws until they stopped we can now turn them back out the same number of turns that we counted earlier before we took it apart after that it's simply a matter of connecting the fuel line linkages and that frustrating choke mechanism also make sure that the grounding wire on the choke mechanism is secure otherwise if it comes loose you could have a tough time turning off the engine okay so here's a great tip for you so after you install each linkage always check and make sure that it's working like they're supposed to otherwise you could have a very tough time fixing it once you've got all the covers back on so here's something I didn't notice up until right now now even though there are two fuel adjustment screws this white plastic piece only gives you access to just one of them the L screw I can only guess that if you didn't know any better and wanted to make some fuel adjustments that the single opening would keep you from making changes to the other screw which could be pretty bad and for the most part they would be correct however I eventually made an opening for the other one so that I could have access to the other fuel adjustment screw now once we get the recoil assembly back onto the chainsaw along with all the Fasteners we'll then check and make sure that we didn't lose any fuel from the tank and also check to make sure we still have some bar oil in it as well then we'll try and start it and see how it runs [Music] [Music] on so even after letting it warm up I then tried to rev the engine and as you just saw it did it but when it came back down to idle it stopped what this is telling me is that there wasn't enough fuel to keep the engine going from a high speed back down to low speed so I'm going to adjust the car by turning the L screw counterclockwise starting with a quarter [Music] turn [Music] [Music] what so this time after making that very slight adjustment on the L screw it seems to be working a whole lot better now so once the engine is cooled back down we're going to have to do another cold start just to make sure that the changes we've made to it won't affect the way that it starts but if we do have trouble starting it when it's cold we'll have to make yet another adjustment to it and then we'll have to do another cold start just to make sure everything works like it should again and only after multiple cold starts where we don't have to make any adjustments to it will I be happy with where the carb is tuned at and that's why it's so important to get the original settings before we take the fuel adjustment screws out it just makes your job easier when we do our testing now I will let you know that the next two cold starts I did later on required no changes to be made and I gave the saw back very soon right after that I will say that working on these older saws is a lot easier in some ways than the newer ones and if I had my choice I'd pick the older ones to have as my own personal saw so of course my question is if given a choice between a good conditioned saw like this one or something a little bit newer which one would you choose Thank you for watching I really do appreciate your time here please feel free to ask me any questions about this project or about your own projects and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: INSIDE HOUSE GARAGE

Views: 38,064

Keywords: honda, husqvarna, poulan, toro, troybilt, troy, craftsman, craftsmen, 216, 217, harmony, won't, start, will, not, starting, starts, run, running, runs, work, works, working, problem, fix, diy, grass, mow, yard, yardmachine, home, garage, inside, house, air, filter, spark, oil, gas, carb, carburetor, clean, rebuild, ultrasonic, bowl, jet, clogged, clog, clear, wheel, deck, blade, pull, rope, cap, line, bag, clooged, water, easy, simple, mountfield, snapper, self, propel, shakes, commercial, exmark, Tecumseh, transmission, drive, cub, cadet, Murray, lawn, stihl, chainsaw

Id: 9RXzK9avnog

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2023