Stihl 031av restoration

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Little Jerrry

ArboristSite Operative
Joined
May 17, 2014
Messages
144
Reaction score
70
Hi

Though I would share an 031av that I have restored. Lighting is not the best in the shed but you get the idea.

I wanted a project to learn to powder coat and I love these old school metal cased saws- not sure if it is sacrilege around here to use non oem colours but I just picked what I thought would look good (illusion orange metallic, dirty white, super chrome).

I replaced basically everything I could new and sourced good second hand parts..only real change was the standard electronic ignition conversion (flywheel / chip).

chainsaw3.JPG chainsaw2.JPG chainsaw4.JPG chainsaw1.JPG chainsaw5.JPG chainsaw7.JPG chainsaw6.JPG chainsaw9.JPG chainsaw8.JPG
 
Hi

Though I would share an 031av that I have restored. Lighting is not the best in the shed but you get the idea.

I wanted a project to learn to powder coat and I love these old school metal cased saws- not sure if it is sacrilege around here to use non oem colours but I just picked what I thought would look good (illusion orange metallic, dirty white, super chrome).

I replaced basically everything I could new and sourced good second hand parts..only real change was the standard electronic ignition conversion (flywheel / chip).

View attachment 737298 View attachment 737299 View attachment 737300 View attachment 737301 View attachment 737302 View attachment 737303 View attachment 737304 View attachment 737305 View attachment 737306
Very nice indeed, well presented.

what set up do you need for powder coating?
Cheers Phil
 
Forgot to mention that I owe thanks to a lot of the members here who entertained my ignorant forum questions about Stihl chainsaws as I began my decent down the slippery slope that is chainsaw addiction.

Very nice indeed, well presented.

what set up do you need for powder coating?
Cheers Phil

My setup is essentially an Australian / China sourced equivalent of what you can get from Eastwood in the USA....benchtop sandblast cabinet / cylcone dust extractor / shop vac / 10+cfm air compressor (s) /multi voltage powder coat gun / small convection oven. Prismatic powder (USA company) is where I sourced the powder from - good site to visit to see their gallery to see what is possible.

Good resource I utilised is http://www.powdercoatguide.com

Main tip I can give you is to bake the parts for like an hour + at 450F+ to get rid of any trapped moisture in the alloy otherwise you may get outgassing coming through when you bake the powder at 400F
 
Although the saw looks nice, does it run? I ask, because your choice to powder coat the crankcase interior AND gasket mating surfaces, would seem to make it far more difficult to obtain a proper seal and subsequent good vacuum or pressure test. Just curious. Another concern is coating specific areas that were left bare by Stihl, to ensure a proper grounding of all assembled parts.
 
I recently restored an 031 AV for a friend. His dad bought the saw back in the 1970's. It needed a new carb, fuel line, and filter plus a tune up. Runs fine now, but my squawk is that the placement of the carb and carb cover was not a very good design. The cover was squeezing the fuel line closed. I rerouted that with a longer new line to improve it, but I still found it rather awkward. I was rather amazed that the saw measured 150 psi. compression after 40 years or so.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top