Time to get familiar with Dolkitas... picked up a 6401 today.

This popped up on CL this afternoon for next to nothing, and I nabbed it. Looks to have been straight-gassed (locked up, with suspiciously pale fuel in the tank), but is otherwise practically like new under the dirt. The air filter is clean as a whistle, there's no paint missing anywhere, chisel chain has only been sharpened a couple of times at most, and even the bar shows little wear.

I have yet to work on a saw so badly frozen as this one. How the heck do you get the piston off of the connecting rod if it's stuck inside the cylinder?

I understand it's easy to upgrade these with the P&C from a larger model, so I'll have to figure out whether I ought to do that, too. Decisions, decisions...

 

Thanks for the tip. If I do put a bigger top end on it, it will be interesting to see how it compares to the 460. Certainly won't make sense to keep both.

 

Heh. Probably, but I just shone a light through the plug hole and I can't see any scoring at all above the piston. Hmmmm.....

 

That's where I'm at right now. The muffler screws were packed with dried mud for some reason so I couldn't get them out yesterday, but I propped the saw upright and filled the tubes with water to soften things up overnight, got the dirt out of the way and pulled the muffler a few minutes ago. Not straight gassed...



So, either there's a foreign object wedged under the flywheel, or the crank is busted. At the moment I don't know what to think, except that a broken crank would be really freakish because everything else says this saw has hardly been used at all. I haven't found a scratch on it anywhere.

 

Recoil cover and clutch drum already pulled, and I'm still not sure. The clearance to the coil does look awfully close. Still waking up, taking it slow until the caffeine fully kicks in.

 

Dolkita?

I must be blind or stupid cause that picture looks to be a Makita to me.
Is Dolkita some kind of China made knock off? Like the "Chusqy" saws?

 

Sorry, shorthand for Dolmar/Makita because the the brands have virtually identical product lines except for the color.

 

Now I'm really mystified. I moved the coil back away from the flywheel, and that didn't free anything up. I figured I'd try and pull the flywheel next. No point in a piston stop since nothing was moving, so I just put a socket on the nut with a breaker bar, and just a bit of torque broke it loose from... from what? Nothing fell out, crumbled, scraped or rattled, and now it's turning free. What the heck? I'm virtually certain it would run, but I am reluctant to try without some idea of what was wrong. My best idea at the moment, inspired by the mud in the muffler tubes, is that it was in a flood, and water got into the crankcase and rusted the bearings, but I really don't see any evidence to support that; there's a healthy oil film on the piston, no mud anywhere else, and no sign it was opened up and cleaned either. Freaky.

 

Ah, didn't know that. Are all Makita saws just green Dolmars then?

 

You should big bore it.... just to be safe

 

Blue!

 

I'm not expert enough to say whether that's universally the case, but from what I've read many of the saws have nearly exact equivalents in both brands.

 

Rings stuck to the cylinder? Is that even possible with aluminum cylinder?

 

From what I can see now, it looks like I could sell the original top end and get enough to pay for both the saw and an aftermarket big bore kit!

 

Last I remember Bailey's has an aftermarket 84cc big bore kit that bolts on exactly.If it was me I'd be getting that plus the high performance air filter,mega large falling dawgs & full wrap handlebar.......

 

Looks green to me! I looked on their website and everything there is green. http://www.makitatools.com