Stihl 041 driving me nuts!

[jiggysmb]

My father in law had an old 041, date on the carb is 1963! This saw had low compression and got new rings, so now it has 160 psi. It would not start due to the impulse line being clogged with grey goo, looked like hondabond, but I verified it had spark. I cleared the impulse connection and flushed crank area with gas. While I had it apart I replaced fuel line, impulse line, fuel tube/filter and carb kit. Now I have no spark.

During the tear down I used red gasket maker between the cylinder/riser and riser/carb. Could this have broken any electrical connection? Considering  I didn't touch the flywheel what else may have caused the spark to cease?

[DelawhereJoe]

Have you checked the ground wire and also check the kill switch, years ago mine went bad. Just remember there does come a time to retire things of old and upgrade to new and fancy technology. My 041 was purchased new by my father back in 1972 it was handed down to me when he purchased an 036 in the mid late 90's. Does yours still run off points ?

[DelawhereJoe]

I remember after my uncle borrowed the saw and straight gassed it, when it went into the shop for a rebuild, they had to bring a mechanic out of mothballs.....none of the new techs knew how to adjust / set the points on the saw.

[jiggysmb]

It is still points/condenser. If I had started with a spark issue I probably would have sold it for parts. Now the ignition is the only issue, but seeing the conversion from points to electronic is $80 on ebay I dont think that would be worth it. I may just have to cut my losses. I saw a used point/condeser for $45 but still that may not be worth it. The kill switch definitely is not the OEM switch but I had good spark before. I flushed the crankcase with gas and now wonder if that got into the ignition and screwed something up. I disassembled the ignition and ran a wired dremmel brush over everything but still no go. Weird thing is if I remove the spark plug and ground to the body, then run the flywheel with a cordless drill and touch the ground wire to the body, it and the spark plug give me a single little spark. Im thinking it may just be the capacitor is weak but that is a shot in the dark.