I did jug & slug in a previous life on a 351 to make a 346xp including the intake boot clamp upgrade. I have another 351, good p&c, and performed a gasket delete & muff mod. For the life of me I can not get the boot back on the cylinder. What is the trick? I did this once already, and then said "ah crap, I must need to install the boot and then mount the cylinder". So I removed, cleaned up the permatex, and tried that way. No go, couldn't get it to line up. So.... who can give me the trick for this that apparently I once knew?? Sadly, all the googling gives AS hits that have dead pic links and Photobucket pay garbage.
It's much easier (IIRC) to mount the boot on the cyl first, then drop onto the saw. What isn't lining up, the nipple to the cyl or the partition wall? Did you try not fully tightening the boot to cyl till you get it in place, then clamp?
With the boot on the cylinder before mounting, I couldn't get the cylinder to sit flat on the side closest to the carb. I saw it was misaligned (bolt holes in cylinder to case), as though the boot was fighting it from sitting down properly. Once removed, it sits flat, but then I can't get the boot on. With the boot comes the whole huge plastic shroud thing, was looking at just cutting off those carb alignment holes that really get in the way when doing this. I did leave the clamp tight the whole time. I'll have to give it another go when no so frustrated. Using gasket maker and learning this on the fly is not so friendly. Another round of scraping it off awaits
Did you try a shallow pan of warm-boiling water on the non-assembled end of the boot? - expand and soften it a bit
No, this is kind of the stupid part of this saw, the boot sits in a hard plastic casing and they need to go on together, so its not so much the boot as the two together that is the problem. Good to see you posting, hope the 441 is still cutting well! I'll get back to the saw hopefully one night this week. During the week usually too beat to do much tinkering, and then the weekend I want to be outside, not tinkering. I know, first world problems.
This was great advice! Thank you. So I took my time with a dry run and probably took me half an hour just to figure out what the heck was wrong. The new style shroud that goes over intake boot was just not seating deep enough. I took off the carb screw cover plastic thing with the impulse connection. This made things easier to coerce. I forced it on and tightened the clamp (I used a Stihl clamp). So she is setting up and may be able to have some trigger time tomorrow. The cold weather may me be a wuss and stay inside so I got my tinker time in.
