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Rx7man

Rx7man

Cattle Rubbing Post
Joined
Oct 9, 2014
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Interior BC
OK, I figure I might be more active here in the next while, so I'll start a thread with all my projects...

I have 3 husky 65's, 2 of which are ported, and one of those has a bigger carb, I love those saws.

My friend gave me his dead 480, the mounts were all demolished.. to the point some of them wore through the fuel tank and it was leaking.. He's had the saw for ages and has never had it apart, but when I tore it down I got a real surprise.. a piston pin C clip was missing on the left side.. it scored the cylinder a little, but not too badly because it doesn't reach up to the compression area. I advised him this would make a better parts saw than a runner, but decided to fiddle with it anyhow.. I made my own AV mounts, and they seem like they'll do well, then fixed the fuel line and started to work on the jug, porting it... DOH, got a little greedy and saw daylight through one of the transfer ports, so I JB welded it back up.. the saw will probably get a new piston and jug before too long anyhow.
He also gave me a bunch of dead POS saws.. A Ford saw, a Craftsman that certainly was straight gassed, and a Homelite that has serious damage, though I'm not sure if that one got straight gassed. I'd really like to know the model of the Homelite, it's about a 75cc, and from the 1975-1985 era
IMG_9874_crop_sm.jpg


I didn't spend much time on the Craftsman.. you could feel the rings hanging up on the ports when you pulled on it, and the compression guage showed a whole 20 PSI.. so I'll yank the carb, kill switch, and toss the rest.
The Ford has 90 PSI, so it has enough life left to bother with.. has some fueling issues I'll have to fix.. plug filter/lines or something, it fired up great with some gas down the carb

The Homelite I have all apart.. it had about 50 PSI compression and refused to fire.. WOW, I've never seen a piston that mangled up... it was able to rock about 5* in the bore, the skirts were demolished, and the skirt area of the jug was cracked. What baffles me is the inside top of the head is absolutely bright and shiny, but the piston has a good coating of carbon on it.. what could have caused this? The piston doesn't have scores from heat, it's just bashed to hell... What do you think of it? IMG_9883_sm.jpg IMG_9885_sm.jpg
 
If you eBay the Ford saw, it'll bring good $$.

The big Homelite looks like a Super XL-925 (or something close), from later in the production run.
 
I had another homelite that was identical but blue, and it had points ignition, this one is solid state. It's too bad I tossed the old blue one out a year or two ago, the ignition was fubared.. I'd have been able to make one good runner out of the two of them.. isn't it always the same.. you throw something away and you need it just after!. The bore is 2", and the stroke is about 1.75 give or take.. casings are all in good shape. Thanks for the model number on the Homelite,.. I looked it up on Acres and it is identical... Surprising to see the power of 5.2 HP. I didn't know they had a automatic oiler and the manual pump was just additional.. it's the only saw I had at the time that was able to cut wood underwater! Any other saw would seize up the chain.

I'll keep the Ford saw for a while.. first I gotta get it running right.. It really matches one of our tractors nicely :)
 
Warped5 said:
If you eBay the Ford saw, it'll bring good $$.

The big Homelite looks like a Super XL-925 (or something close), from later in the production run.
Click to expand...
Not sure about Ford saws but I just sold two good running Allis Chalmers saws on eBay that were rebranded Poulan 25DA saws. They both went over $200.
 
The homelite is indeed a late model sxl 925. The ut probably peeled off. but it looks identical to the later model 925 I have with the red air cleaner cover. The bore should be 2.0625 stroke 1.5 on the 82cc version, I have heard rumor about a 77 cc late model version that had a 2" bore.

Maybe that is what happened to it, They put a new cylinder on the old piston? that could explain the rocking, What is the bore measure on the Jug?
 
There's no stickers left on the homelite that are legible except the warning label behind the handguard. Any ideas why the top of the combustion chamber was so polished clean while the piston wasn't?
Really doubt this saw has ever been apart.. no screws were missing or stripped. I'll probably keep it around.. hung up on a wall somewhere hoping to find a saw a tree fell on... This is the 82cc version.
 
OK, so the 480 is running now.. a bit of a nightmare with it though.. fuel tank had a hole in the bottom I hadn't caught before.. And I had to fight like hell with the carb. wouldn't run except with the choke on.. I got very fast at removing the carb with all the practice I had.. over and over again, double check, clean, adjust.. NOTHING would make it work.. Finally I found the culprit.. The little plastic elbow where the fuel line goes on had a crack in it and it was sucking air!.. So I look around, and whaddya know, that POS craftsman had the same elbow on it's carb, so I pried it off carefully and installed it, and voila!, she ran nicely after that. sharpened up the chain and it's cutting well.. compression is only 140 psi with no base gasket, but I don't think that's too terrible considering they're well worn rings and the jug had the wrist pin rubbing against it for years! The antivibe mounts I made seem to work really well, and I suspect will last longer than the originals, and not fail as catastrophically when they do... I'll post a vid of it on Saturday.

Then I tackled the Ford saw, again, more fueling issues, but that carb is a misery to remove and reinstall... so I only wanted to do it once. My problem with it last time is the float needle was buggered, but i found that the Tillotson (it's a walbro carb) have the exact same needle, so I stole one from my parts carb and was back in business. Then I pressurized the tank to see if I was getting fuel.. no fuel.. just air, so I peek into the tank and well, the fuel line on the inside of the tank is broken off/missing.. For a quick fix I just filled the tank right full so you can run it down to about 1/2 a tank now, connected everything up and she fired up nicely... a little tweaking and I'll see how it cuts wood tomorrow... Will post a vid of it as well on saturday :)

Next in line is a baby Stihl that's in pieces but apparently a good saw.. it has only ever cut meat, so I dont' think it's been beaten up much... After that 2 big Jonsereds need AV mounts built, porting done, new rings, etc.
 
Oops.. shop's busy.. There's a mid size older Echo that needs a oil pump drive made (obsolete part) and a pair of 80-90cc jonsered saws that are coming in for a rebuild and wake up job too.. I know they need new AV mounts made for them.. Once again, obsolete parts I'm going to have to get creative about finding solutions to.

Another buddy of mine has a pair of old 3120 powerheads... figure that could be interesting :innocent: Make for a nice little milling setup
I'll keep you posted
 
OK, so I posted this on it's own thread, but now that it's pretty much (needs a fuel hose yet) running, Here's a vid of the ford saw


I did a much more aggressive port on one of the Husky 65's as well as a good muffler mod, an overbored (9/16th to 11/16th) carb, but I think my intake duration is too long in comparison to what the transfer ports can flow, it sounds wicked, but doesn't pull hard in the wood.. I think as a limbing saw it would work excellent where you want it snappy and quick, which it certainly is. I know my problem with it is intake reversion, the bane of too big an intake port. I think if I had 5* or so less on my intake and 3* earlier transfer port opening it would be much better.. I'm learning, and it's better to do it with old stuff!
Here's the vid of it in the cut with a chain that wandered a bit.. It was about 4 seconds faster than my first porting job, but it was running a little too rich when I timed it.
When I resharpened the chain and made it more aggressive, this port job fell on it's face completely, it was 10 seconds slower than with the not-too-sharp chain


Next up on the list of machines to fix is a little Remington saw, I don't think it'll take much.. Flip the kill switch around so that the "ON" position is Run, not "On" as in grounding out the ignition!.. and then dump the stale fuel out, clean the carb, and it should be good to go..

After that the fellow I got this saw from has a MS270 that isn't running right, you have to slowly increase and pump the throttle to get it to rev up, I'm figuring a dirty carb in all likelyhood, unless it's just that low on compression... Hopefully he doesn't have it set miserably lean and it's cooked.. He said he loves that saw and wants it running again.

Next in line is a little tophandle "Frontier" saw, has good compression, I think the carb again is buggered.
They were made in Trail, BC


=515628&filters[recent]=1&sort=1&o=0'] After that, (Maybe before) he has a suspected Jonsered saw in the 50cc range that needs a clutch.
CAN YOU TELL ME THE MODEL OF IT? (if it is indeed a Jonsered)
.
 
Yesterday I got my sheet of aluminum CNC plasma cut for my '94 dodge front bumper.. it took MONTHS of drafting in autocad (Because I'm not that good at it) to get it to look how I wanted it to. Plasma cutting went OK, not perfect, but close enough for this job,.. the table was only a 4'x4' table, so we had to re-index it at halfway, and it's not easy to get that right. Will have lots of grinding to do on the edges yet. Now the trick will be to weld it without turning it into a pretzel!.. Weld from the center outward I guess and maybe preheat the whole thing, or let it cool between welds.

Anyhow, It's only tacked together so far, but here's how it looks
20150217_194230_sm.jpg
 
Oh, and that Remington Mighty Mite 400.. the fuel lines were all buggered, so I replaced those.. darned thing doesn't have a high speed adjust screw, so it runs lean and hates starting without the choke.. Oiler doesn't seem to work, and I don't know how they could possibly call that thing "antivibe".. My hands were tingling after just a couple minutes of running it. A real POS!
 
OK, next projects!
Poulan 4218 AVX... pretty bloody buggered up, still runs but poorly and impossible to tune.. got run without the air filter, and possibly straight gassed as well.. Not spending my time on it unless I find another P&C

2x Jonsered 920's... One good running saw a little down on power, the other a bit beat up but runs harder.. going to try and make one really good saw. The one that ran best had 140 PSI comp, haven't checked the other one yet.
Measured the squish without the base gasket at .018" (.45mm). Degreed it up in stock form at 105/124/70 with the base gasket.. going to go for about 104* on the exhaust, intake is MISERABLE, and not much room for improvement, so it should benefit from a bit more duration.. I'll probably put it in the low 80* range. Will need to do a lot of cleanup to it and there'll be lots of delicate work.. Transfers looks pretty good in stock form, and a lot nicer to work on than the Husky 65's, as they're a more open design, and better to begin with. One of the two saws has no muffler, so depending on if I think I can fix it up well enough I'll make my own for that one. Buddy wants torquey saws still, so I'll leave one of them with not far from stock durations, and the other opened up a little more.. then he can figure out which one he picks up more often *snickers*

Next project for him should be simple.. He's got a smaller Echo that needs an oil pump gear, but it's obsolete.. There's a newer version of a similar gear, with a different shaft size (smaller), so i'll have to turn it carefully on the lathe and make it fit
 
If you cut the material away from under the bottom transfers to match the notches in the crankcase you will effectively turn the 920 cylinder into a late style 930. They really do breath a lot better open to the crankcase and pick up decent power with just this mod alone from what I am told (haven't ever been able to try it myself, Jonsered was a nobody down here and I have not been fortunate enough to find a 900 series, yet).

Joe
 
Yeah, I was looking at that.. they can do with a lot of massaging in that area... I'm also trying to wrap my head around how in the world the air gets into there.. When I compare with the Husky 65, the 65's have lots of space around the outside of the crank wheels for flow, the Jonsered has nothing, and as you're wanting peak flow (BDC), the crank weights are in the way.. No doubt they have a higher crankcase compression ratio to compensate for this.. A case of the chicken vs the egg..
 

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