Fixing An Echo Trimmer That Won't Start After Storage

it won't be too long before you're not able to see something like this echo tremor at the big box stores so in my mind I'm going to try and save as many as I can however just because you can do something doesn't mean you'll be able to and this one doesn't go as smoothly as I was hoping for at least I'll be able to share what happened with this one that way hopefully what happened to me doesn't happen to you in today's video we're going to be looking at this Echo string trimmer and the problem is that after years in storage it won't start and run and now the entire fuel system needs to be serviced and want to say it needs servicing I'm talking about everything you're also going to see what happens when you use ethanol fuel in these small engines and it's not pretty now I'm gonna try and repair this trimmer but yours might be different so this might not work on yours so if things are not working out for you like in this video please ask about it I'll be glad to answer your questions now with everything that's gasoline being phased out and in its place is something well I'll phrase it as the next step in technology I'm gonna have to admit that I'm not ready to make that switch just yet so when I had a co-worker reach out to me and ask me to fix this beautiful Echo Trimmer I jumped at the opportunity however it does bring up a few interesting points about aftermarket parts and their existence and what's going to happen when they're no longer around I'll get back to that topic here in a bit but before we continue I do want to look over this machine just to get an idea of what I'm working with of course this trimmer comes with free fuel fuel in the tank which on inspection is in really good condition however I can't tell if it has any ethanol in it which is the reason why this trimmer is in the condition that's in after pulling on the rope a few times I can tell that the engine is fighting back quite well so I'm pretty certain that it has plenty of compression and is not worn out after that I think it's time to put some fuel into the carb's throat and see if it'll start and run foreign so the good news is that the engine started and ran long enough to realize that it sounds very healthy the bad news is that we now have a lot of work to do to get this trimmer working again and of course since it looks like this thing's been stored on the ground in a barn I need to spray off as much dirt as possible and while I was doing this I also noticed that there was quite a bit of dirt and oil around certain parts of the engine which means I'll have to focus on these parts so the easiest way to get this machine back up and running would be to buy a kit consisting of the carb fuel lines filters and even a spark plug but the best part is that because of the aftermarket support for this brand even with this model being more than 15 years old these kits are cheap and plentiful that means it could take as little as two to three days to get this machine back up and running just so long as you don't have any other issues even though the kits are cheap and if you know that you don't need the carb piecing together your own kit is even cheaper and what I mean by that is that I already have metering diaphragms Purge bulbs fuel lines filters and even a few grommets waiting to be used of course I bought the separate pieces in bulk that way each part was very affordable so you might be asking yourself how is that any better than just buying a kit online simple the answer is downtime now with these parts already on hand I don't have to wait I can assemble my own kit right here with everything that I have however there can be a few drawbacks now unless you have a large organizer to keep everything in you're gonna run out of one or more of these parts so unless you have a kanban system that's being managed at some point you're going to be out of luck which is what's about to happen to this project here in a few minutes don't worry when the time comes I'll point out my mistake now when mistakes happen like this they're not all bad and what we need to do is to use them as a learning tool to try to keep this from happening in the future again of course I don't expect anybody in their right mind to buy 50 metering diaphragms Purge bulbs and 100 feet of fuel line just so that you can get a great deal but if you do and you know that you're going to eventually use them all you're going to do yourself a huge favor and here's the best part since this machine is what most would call worth fixing the aftermarket support for should be around for a very long time it's when you have those cheaper throwaway machines that you'll find the aftermarket support is a bit lacking mainly because there's no real money to be made on them now I'm not saying that since you bought a cheap home light trimmer 12 years ago that you won't be able to find parts for it but you might realize that there's only one aftermarket supplier making parts for it and that's it and there are no guarantees that they're going to keep making these parts for cheap trimmers in the near future so buying a cheap trimmer makes short-term sense but in the long term I don't think so so after taking a better look at the fuel lines and The Grommet you can see that some of the lines have hardened While others are extremely soft but the part that obviously took it the worst was of course the rubber fuel tank grommet now these are typically made with a rubber that's not meant to resist ethanol so when it comes to long-term contact with it it'll become soft and Squishy and basically fall apart so here's the mistake that I made so I do have plenty of these fuel tank grommets in my bag but it didn't have a small one with three openings I only had the ones with two openings I did however have this one with three openings it was just a little too large to fit in the tank opening though now I knew it was going to be tight but I figured that it would just help to keep it from leaking any fuel in the future but what ended up happening was that about a week later it eventually caused the fuel lines to pass through it to collapse causing a fuel flow issue and had to replace it with the correct size later on now when I ordered the new part I didn't just order a single part instead I ordered a pack of 10 that way I don't have to worry about having this issue again for at least the next year and that's because I know I have several of these machines in the warehouse waiting to be fixed so why didn't I just swap out one of those fuel tank grommets to use on this machine then well guess what all those machines needed and if you guessed fuel tank grommets you'd be right now this tank grommet was so tough to install that had to finish the installation off camera because I needed to get right over it to get the leverage I needed not too bad I was just gonna have to do this job again in about a week but this wasn't the only problem with this machine I had to fix so as you can see the trigger is broken which is a common occurrence for this type of design and it's pretty obvious as to why it broke it's much too long and because of its design it sits too far away from the handle this of course makes it a lot easier to break off now I do happen to have a parts trimmer and luckily it had a good trigger on it but like I said in the last video on this trimmer I'll need to buy replacement just to have on hand if I should need it again I will say one thing though I think they knew how easy it was going to be to break this part so they designed the handle in such a way that it was going to be very easy to replace the trigger now on other models and even in the same brand most times you have to take the entire handle apart to fix it but not on this one now if this were my personal trimmer I might try to store it with the trigger squeezed and then secure it to the handle with something that I could take off easily later on I do have one of these in working condition which I've done that too it's in long-term storage right now until I figure out what I want to do with it after that's done I'll finally get to the carb and take it apart so I can inspect it so what am I looking 4 when inspecting the carb first I need to make sure the inlet screen is clear of any debris then I need to check on the condition of all the diaphragms and finally I need to make sure the fuel will pass through the screen now this type of pumping diaphragm rarely has any issues with it so I'm not going to worry too much about this one which means the screen is my next concern luckily it appears that it's completely clean which is great news that means we get to move on to the metering diaphragm which is underneath this metal plate now if your screen was covered with a lot of debris it means the engine was running while the fuel filter had broken off the fuel line in the tank so here's the metering diaphragm and it's in pretty rough shape it's not the worst I've seen but it's certainly getting there now the diaphragm is supposed to help control fuel flow through the carbs so it's supposed to be soft and pliable but this one has lost about 50 percent of its flexibility however to get a better feel for it I'm going to remove it from the carb as well as the gasket and once it's by itself it's pretty much confirmed that it's definitely lost a lot of its flexibility and it would not want to reuse it and instead I'm going to replace it now since it's not completely petrified I'm going to throw it into the Rejuvenation bath just on the off chance that in a pinch I might have to use it for a future project however if that diaphragm was rock hard there's no saving it in the bath and it's just best to throw it away the last item I need to check is whether or not fuel will flow through the screen after I put some on the screen I'll then press the rocker arm and watch to see if fuel will disappear through it unfortunately ours did not disappear which means we need to clean the screen with some carb cleaner but we need to remove the needle and rocker arm first otherwise we might damage the needle now once they're out of the way I'll then spray carb cleaner on the screen and agitate it until it disappears through the screen now this might take a few minutes or it might take a few seconds and fortunately we didn't have to wait too long on this one next we'll put the car back together I will say one thing though taking the carb apart to clean it can be very difficult for some and if you lose any of these tiny Parts you're going to be in big trouble now if you like a challenge go for it it's really not that difficult to do however depending upon the overall condition of the carb and how much you take it apart to clean it there's always the chance the carb is still not going to work and of course to avoid the situation I would always recommend on just replacing the carb with either a cheap aftermarket one or very expensive OEM part the other consideration is if your time is extremely valuable to you of course I'm not saying you need to make fifty dollars an hour but what I'm saying is that if you don't have a lot of time to give then saving that time by buying a 17 part seems to make good money sense so far I replaced the diaphragm for one dollar a purge bulb for 10 cents the fuel lines for about one dollar and finally a grommet valued at three dollars that's a grand total of a little over five dollars which I have to say is a steal compared to those cheap carb kits even without a carb so was buying in bulk worth it I'd say it was also when connecting the fuel lines to the carb the filter line will connect to the larger Port while the return line connects to the smaller port now before I try and start the engine I need to make sure fuel is flowing through the lines just like it's supposed to so I need to put a small amount of it into the tank try purging the air out of the system and see what happens now this part is very important if the bulb does not partially fill with fuel then the likelihood that the engine is going to start is very low so what do you do if the bulb will not fill with any fuel well there are only a few choices first you can either take the car back off and see if you can find an issue with it or you can just order a new carb so for me if this happens I would just order a new car because I really don't feel like wasting any more of my time fortunately ours is filling with fuel and that's a great sign so we'll move on to something that most people Overlook now on small two-stroke engines most of the Mufflers will have a spark arrestor screen somewhere inside them and just like their name implies it keeps tiny Sparks from leaving the engine and starting a fire but sometimes these screens will start to clog up with carbon and if enough collects there it could block up the airflow out of the engine and cause your engine to not get to full speed and not have enough power either now this one is not that bad at all only the far end of the screen has any build up on it and even though the screen is not going to cause any problems for the engine since we've got it out anyway I'm going to clean it using my torch of course there are other ways to clean the screen like using carb cleaner or even oven cleaner but I enjoy using the torch a lot more because it's a lot easier now I'm not going to tell you that you should not throw away the screen but I would recommend that you reinstall it just because the idea of destroying someone else's property doesn't sound nice foreign [Music] thank you so it looks like servicing the car but with a new diaphragm and making sure that fuel is able to flow through the car but was all it needed to get this trimmer back to working condition I will let you know that even though I only spent five dollars in parts to get the engine working again if I had just bought the cheap carb kit for the machine for only 17 it would have taken all the guesswork and uncertainty out of this project I wouldn't have had to find out the part numbers round up all the parts from different vendors and hope that they work together so if you take anything from this video just know that if I wasn't such a penny pincher I would have just bought the 17 carp kit and called a day and as far as the aftermarket is concerned I think it's the best thing since gasoline was put into small engines and I'm going to keep supporting them as long as I can because without them we'd all have a lot less money in our pockets so my question is when you need to get parts do you choose to get cheap after market parts or do you only get OEM Parts because of the difference in quality 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: Home Garage

Views: 11,161

Keywords: stihl, husqvarna, echo, ryobi, troybilt, troy, troy-bilt, strimmer, trimmer, homelite, poulan, craftsman, craftsmen, weedeater, weed, eater, grass, trim, edge, edger, yard, yardman, will, not, start, won't, run, starting, running, starts, runs, work, working, works, fix, problem, solve, help, diy, garage, inside, house, home, spark, gas, fuel, line, mix, cycle, 2 cycle, 2 stroke, stroke, can't, why, my, carb, carburetor, rebuild, kit, rebilt, shaft, pull, rope, string, engine, kill, switch, rev, rpms, speed, head, on, off, worn, out, blown, broke

Id: _0WcRe-roVY

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023