288XP Blew Up - Help!

[Sepia]

Do you have a pic of the piston? Cylinder damage looks like there might have been a 2 ring piston installed and caught the ring ends on each side of the exhaust port.

 

[Sepia]

Okay—so here’s the light version and others smarter than me can chime in with the deets.

1) 288’s are awesome. I have probably $200 into mine and that’s a steal. If you’re handy and willing to read a bunch here, you should totally fix and have a killer saw.

2) It didn’t over-rev and then blew up. Something happened which made it revv weird/fast/different. That’s the mystery you need to solve when rebuilding so that it doesn’t happen again.

3) For a (cool) saw like this, OEM cylinder, please. (That’s my opinion and worth what you paid for it).

4) If you don’t want to fool with rebuilding, you can sell the carcass and don’t take too much of a lowball. Unless it’s my lowball from a few posts up.

5) I can’t tell from that pic (on my phone) how the conrod looks. But even if it is toast, new OEM bearings, seals, piston + good used crank, cylinder (if yours won’t clean up. Is probably less than $200. Worth it for a 288 in my opinion.

This thread made me pull mine off the shelf:

View attachment 784247

I like everything you wrote, but up here in Canuckistan, that $200 estimate will easily be over $400cdn if going with oem parts.

 

[Bob Hedgecutter]

I like everything you wrote, but up here in Canuckistan, that $200 estimate will easily be over $400cdn if going with oem parts.

You want to try pricing it out in NZ$....... will make you want to take up knitting!

 

[Huskybill]

To me it had fins missing on the flywheel previously then with the flywheel being out of balance the crankbearing on the flywheel went kaput, air leak killed the piston.
Maybe find a donor saw for parts or sell it off.

Looks like a crank and flywheel is needed too besides a piston kit. I think it can be repaired, even ported, for around $175. Maybe less.

If you build it, do a leak test after assembly.