Advice on a new chainsaw

[Bruno of NH]

I had that done to me once. 
It has always left me skeptical on the dealers.
That's just wrong in my book.
That's why I would like to learn how to work on these things.

[Real1shepherd]

Sorry I'm late to this.....I would have recommended cleaning the entire pull mechanism as well.

This is why people go on and on about picking up "broken" saws for dirt.....and then finding an easy fix.

Kevin

[kelLOGg]

The coil spring and housing has greasy sawdust on it and all I did was wipe them clean with diesel and reassemble. It still baffles me as to how such slick dirt could cause such a temporary hard pull which after 5 or 6 pulls behaved normally.

[Old Greenhorn]

The coil spring and housing has greasy sawdust on it and all I did was wipe them clean with diesel and reassemble. It still baffles me as to how such slick dirt could cause such a temporary hard pull which after 5 or 6 pulls behaved normally.

This reminded me of back about 20 years ago I was handling all the machine maintenance isn a 25 man CNC shop where I worked. A guy calls me over and says "my machine's broke", I ask "what happened, give me a clue". He says, "I dunno it just stopped for no reason and gave me an 'axis drive overload error'. Off he goes and I start troubleshooting. I got to the point of pulling the way covers and called him back over.  I pointed under the way cover and said "You are a f-----g SLOB! If I was the boss you would be out the door, clean this machine like you are going to eat off it, then I will come back and finish." Under the way cover the machine was packed solid with aluminum chips, so much so, that the table could no longer move. Because he never cleaned off the chips on the top of the covers they eventually piled up and got forced under the covers. He filled two barrels with the chips he pulled out of there, took him 2 hours. After that day, when he asked me for help, my first question was 'is the machine clean?' If it wasn't, I didn't go.
 Obviously, your issue was much smaller than this guys chronic problem and i am sure it didn't come from wanton neglect. But the point is that a little cleaning goes a long way. Just to make sure you know that I am not picking on you: For a while now my little 450 has been running poorly and I put up with it to keep working. Finally last week it was getting bad and I stopped to address it. When I pulled the cover I saw that the air filter was pretty much plugged solid. A new filter and the problem was gone. 5 minutes down time total, yet I put it off for weeks before I looked at it. I should follow my own advice.

[Real1shepherd]

The coil spring and housing has greasy sawdust on it and all I did was wipe them clean with diesel and reassemble. It still baffles me as to how such slick dirt could cause such a temporary hard pull which after 5 or 6 pulls behaved normally.

Basically, whenever your recoil starts getting hard to pull....tear it all apart clean and relube the spring. Pitch will get into everything eventually...recoils the worst because of the mechanism.

Sometimes I'll just tear into a recoil because it's been a long while and even though it was working, after cleaning/lubing there is no comparison. Don't forget to clean the flywheel pawls too and their posts.

Kevin

[samandothers]

Glad you got your issue fixed!  Good on ya to work through this!

[DDW_OR]

.....5 minutes down time total, yet I put it off for weeks before I looked at it. I should follow my own advice.

been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
had a table saw that would not start. opened the electrical control box, found it packed with sawdust. glad it did not start a fire.

[sablatnic]

One more thing, when stopping it, pull out the starter handle while switching off the ignition - I pull the handle over to the switch when switching off. The engine might make a slight kick backwards whwn stopping, yanking the cord tight. When pulling out the cord a few inches it'll have room for that kick