Fixing An Echo Trimmer That Won't Start

I was asked by a co-worker to look at their Tremor and when they told me it was an older gray Echo I told them I was more than excited to work on it the reason is because I find these to be a great option when compared to the high-end equipment of today which are great machines but they've been heavily regulated now even though these may not be for Everyone by the end of this video I hope to change your mind in today's video we look at this Echo trimmer and the problem is that it's been unused for quite some time and now it won't start unfortunately without taking a few important steps before putting them up the fuel system will end up needing a full service before you can use them again now I'm going to try and repair this trimmer but yours might be a little different so this might not work on yours if things aren't working out for you like in the video please ask about it and I'll be glad to answer your questions now these older machines are so underrated and how do I know that because that's how I felt about them so I've been trying to get my hands on the newer SRM 225s for quite some time because I thought there were great machines for the price but once I realized I could get something just as good but at an even better price that pretty much changed my opinion on these now the first thing that I want to do is to take a look around for anything that might be broken and this time we actually find a few items there's a bolt that's broken on the top of the engine that would have held a plastic protector for the spark plug that's not a big deal but I'd have to drill out the broken bolt which is never a fun thing to do the fuel lines have also seen better days so they'll need to be replaced but the good news is that the fuel tank grommet seems to be in great shape meaning someone's replaced it recently now I do want to test the lines and grommet and see if they really need to be replaced and there's no better test than filling up the tank and seeing where the fuel is coming from as you can see there's quite a bit of fuel All Over The Grommet but it seems to be coming from one of the lines and not The Grommet itself unfortunately I didn't get a great vantage point of the league otherwise I know there was a problem with the tank vent which I'm not going to figure out until later on in the video the next thing I'm going to do is to purge the air from the lines and then try to start the engine but I'm not able to get any fuel into the bulb which is not a good sign so the chances of the engine starting is very unlikely now to get around the issue I'm going to have to manually Prime the engine with fuel this allows the pump inside the carb to pull fuel from the tank so of course it didn't start but that's what I was expecting it to do the next thing I'm going to do is to Prime the engine with some fuel and then try starting it if it runs it means the engine is in working condition and we just need to work on the carb to fix this trimmer this should also with any luck pool fuel from the tank and fill the carb [Music] foreign so the engine started and ran a bit longer than expected which means it was able to pull some fuel from the tank and make it to the carb now after pressing the bulb a few times it is pulling a small amount of fuel into it as well [Music] foreign so it seems the engine only wants to stay running while the carb is fully choked which means it's not able to send enough fuel to the engine when not choked now I could start to tune the carb to deliver more fuel to the engine but I need to look it over first to make sure there's not another issue I have to fix and it doesn't take long to find a major issue that turns this from a 30 minute job to a one hour job after draining the tank and looking to see if the fuel filter is still connected to the line inside the tank I soon realized someone had done some work to this engine and made several questionable choices this is the first of them the rubber line is the return line and the clear line is supposed to be the filter line but as you can see the filter is not on the clear line but on the return line which means the car that was pulling in unfiltered fuel from the tank which has a tendency to clog the carb unfortunately that means we have to take the carb off the engine and take it apart so we can inspect the inlet screen for a clog while we're there we might as well check for a bad metering diaphragm and replace it if we need to and since I'm taking all the fuel lines this will be a good time to remove them from the tank and replace them as well so I just removed the tank vent which is supposed to let air into the tank and allows fuel to leave the tank and make it to the carb I noticed that the line was extremely short too short as a matter of fact now this will make more sense later on on some machines the tank vent is built into the fuel cap but this one is separate so the fuel line size I'm going to be using is 3 16 of an inch but this time I'm going to do something a little different normally I use a small inside diameter line but after taking off all the components I soon realized all the ports were extremely large that means I'm going to use a larger inside diameter line this time now you could use the regular size line but you're going to have a tough time pushing them onto the larger ports now it doesn't matter which line goes into which opening in The Grommet you can choose which line goes where and what each one does the only issue is of course the amount of line you leave in the tank now the vent and the return lines don't need to be long at all but I would recommend leaving at least one inch of line in the tank the only line that needs to be long is the filter line that way it can reach all the fuel in the tank so this filter is special and the reason I say that is because it came with a ring to keep the filter on the line which is a pretty good idea however most manufacturers don't do it now once the filter is back in the tank all we have to do is install the tank vent and put it back into its location in the cover now whoever worked on this trimmer before was a bit preoccupied because they made a few interesting choices Each of which are visible on this trimmer and there's still more to come after taking the bulb and the pumping section off the car but we can see the round Inlet screen and surprisingly it's not covered in debris now it is a bit mangled probably from being taken out a few times but it's still doing its job now once I know this carb is working correctly I might have to replace the screen with a new one later on now the pumping diaphragms check valve flaps are parallel with the rest of the diaphragm so we're going to reuse it if yours are bent you might want to consider getting a new carb instead of a rebuild kit the next item I want to look at is the metering diaphragm under this metal plate its job is to control fuel flow through the carb it's supposed to be soft and pliable so it can work a rocker arm but if it's starting to harden or if it has wrinkles or is crooked it may not do a good job of controlling fuel flow luckily the diaphragm is still very soft but the issue is that it's crooked now this doesn't affect it as badly as being petrified but it might cause some running issues when the engine is at temperature so I would recommend replacing it the next item I want to check is fuel flow through the screen now after filling the pocket I'll then press the rocker arm on the other side we want to see the fuel disappear through the screen which ours does if yours doesn't then you'll need to clean the screen with carb cleaner the next thing I want to check is to see where the fuel adjustment screws are set at and to do that I'm going to turn them clockwise until they stop and count the number of turns it takes now the L screws for fuel adjustments at idle speeds and while squeezing the trigger while the H screws for controlling fuel when the trigger is fully squeezed I'm also going to resist the urge to spray carb cleaner directly into the openings I'm leaving them open to give any blockages in the carb a way out now you can spray into them if you want to but I'm not going to do it this time so the first screw I turned in only took half a turn to bottom out which is really strange and after turning the other one it only took three quarters of a turn the reason I think it's strange is because I don't recall any Echo carbs being near these settings I have to wonder if someone's using a different Brand's base settings for this carb either way since I know what the settings are I'll be able to take these out and put them back where I found them the next thing I'm going to do is to carefully take the carb apart so I can give it a good cleaning now this might not be needed but I want to make sure I'm not going to have any issues with this carb and cleaning it is going to increase those chances now if you have an ultrasonic cleaner this will also increase your chances of a successful repair however most find the price of one of these cleaners to be a bit prohibitive now to be honest I would tell most people to not even try and clean or even service the carb and to just buy a new one the reason is time and money if you've never done this before you try it you could do something wrong and waste your time but a new aftermarket car but for this trimmer is only 12 dollars and that's a kit with extra parts is saving 30 minutes of time and one headache worth twelve dollars to you I'd say yes but then again there are some interesting viewers out there who are ready for a challenge after getting the needle and rocker arm back on we can start to put the rest of the carpet back together starting with the fuel adjustment screws remember the turns we counted earlier well those are the numbers I'm going to use after bottoming out these screws just as a spoiler these settings are completely wrong for this carb and I'm going to need to make some minor adjustments to get the engine to run correctly after replacing the metering diaphragm with a new one I always have on hand it means we're only a few minutes away from a completed carb if you didn't know I typically have at least four different types of diaphragms of the most common ones I've come across I typically buy them in a multi-pack of 10 or 20 which makes each one very cheap if you had to buy just one of these it could be as much as five or even eight dollars but buying them in bulk means each one could be less than one dollar so when connecting the fuel lines to the carb the filter line connects to the port further away from the bulb which means the return line connects to the port closer to the bulb but before I finish installing the carb I'm going to put some fuel into the tank and the reason is because I want to make sure the fuel is flowing through the system like it's supposed to the problem is that I soon realize I have a very serious fuel leak strange part is that there should not be a leak here because we just changed the lines out that means the leak is not coming from the lines but something else after taking a closer look a student realized what the problem was the leak is coming from the tank vent so it turns out that whoever worked on this one before had drilled a hole into the side of the body not really sure why someone would do that but it now makes sense why they had the line that went into the tank very short it was to prevent this sort of leak from happening now I don't normally have these on hand so how do I plan on fixing this one well that's pretty easy I'm going to take it apart and make sure the duckbill valve is still working once I know it hasn't been damaged I'll then plastic weld the opening close and then we'll put it back together and test to see if it's still leaking if it's still leaking I'll have to take one from a parts trimmer I have on hand in the shed after tipping the trimmer on its side again the results are much better this time it would seem to fix actually worked which is quite surprising but I am happy to be able to fix it without having to replace it so now back to the flow test when pressing the bulb fuel should come up the filter line and then go into the carb then it should fill the bulb and then leave the carb through the return line and back to the tank so after several presses the fuel is finally filling the bulb and leaving the carb through the return line which means fuel is flowing through the system just like it's supposed to that means we can finally install the air filter base in the correct orientation and reconnect the throttle cable and secure the carb now if you don't see any fuel coming up the filter line and making it to the carb there might be an issue with the carb so what happens if there's only a small amount of fuel getting into the bulb it could mean there's a restriction in the lines or worse yet inside the carb if this happens you can either take the carb apart again and clean it or better yet just order a new aftermarket carb kit for twelve dollars save yourself a headache and please just take the easier route so I'm almost ready to try and start it but there's one more thing I want to check which is the spark arrester screen now its job is to keep Sparks from coming out of the muffler and starting a grass fire the reason I want to check it is because if the screen is clogged with carbon it could cause running issues the funny thing was that after removing the engine cover and the deflector for the exhaust it turns out the screen is completely gone that means someone already took it out a long time ago unfortunately we're still not ready before I can start the engine and tune the carb I need to make sure there's a load on the engine when it's running that means I need to make sure the trimmer line is out of the trimmer head and at the correct length which for some reason wasn't there thank you so what started and ran on choke which you should not be able to do there should be more fuel than the engine should be able to run on that tells me the carb is not giving the engine enough fuel so that means to start off I'm going to turn the L screw counterclockwise to increase fuel flow at idle I'm only going to start with a quarter turn at a time foreign [Music] [Music] oh oh [Music] [Music] oh oh [Music] [Music] [Music] so we were able to finally get it started and then we had to tune the carb to get it to stay running and also run while the trigger was fully squeezed so it turns out we ended up adding a full turn to the base setting on the L screw and adding a half a turn on the H screw which means this carb was not delivering anywhere near the amount of fuel it should have been so in the end it looks like we finally got this wonderful machine running again and to be honest it really didn't take that much to get it running again besides a metering diaphragm and new fuel lines now there were a few interesting choices made by the previous person who worked on it but luckily they were all somewhat easy to fix so my question is would you get one of these for half the price of a used steel or even a used orange Echo to be honest I really like the orange Echoes but for a lot less you can get something that's almost just as good at least in my opinion thank you for watching I really do appreciate your time here please feel free to ask me any questions about this project or your own projects and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: INSIDE HOUSE GARAGE

Views: 25,379

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: 8hYlVhOV2hE

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022