Anyone have any tricks to fix a pull start pulley that won’t recoil the cord? Somehow, I experienced a problem with this on one saw yesterday (2.5 year old husky 390xp) and my Stihl 038 magnum this morning. Took the husky pulley apart, cleaned it and put it back together but no difference. I was too aggravated to try the same on the Stihl. Not sure if I should stop running all equipment today or play the lottery! Any help is appreciated.
Sometimes the tab on the recoil spring breaks off If it was really cold out I would say the other thing that can happen is the recoil rope could be frozen (real stiff)
Recoil springs on all sorts of small engines are a pita. I had issues with the recoil spring on my Tecumseh on the log splitter. I got it to behave decently enough, even though it needs a little coaxing to fully rewind sometimes. Once it's running, it will pull it back slowly.
Should I just buy a new one? I use my saws a lot and they get shut off and fired up often because I cut logs on the forks of my tractor. Pick up a log, get off tractor, cut, turn saw off, go get next log.
Buying a new recoil wouldn’t cost much and you can put the new one on then have the old one repaired and you will always have a spare
Yep. Keep em working well if you need them often. I noticed my old Echo is not fully retracting it's rope and leaves the handle dangling with about 1" of slack. Have not opened it up to investigate yet.
An update on the saws: The Stihl 038 magnum had a busted spring. It was quicker to drop $20 and replace the whole cover which had the spring and coil. Had that up and running as of Saturday. Another problem occurred with that since, which I just made a new thread about. The Husky 390 seems to be manageable if I only do short quick pulls to start it. Not a fix but a way to work around the problem until I make the time to investigate more. I'm assuming/hoping it just needs a good clean out, perhaps with an air compressor? Time will tell but I've been cutting away with it in the meantime.
PITA when that happens. I'm good at working around a problem myself rather than fixing it. You should be in the market for getting a saw ported seeing you cut so much wood.
