RRRocketMan
ArboristSite Lurker
The Remington Mighty Mite, Montgomery Ward and whatever other saws are identical, all have this same issue. The automatic oiling system relies on pressure generated in the crankcase going through a small bore and into the oil reservoir, where the pressure forces the oil out another hole adjacent to your bar and chain. The manual oiler uses a different mechanism (a plunger) to manually pump the oil. The bore connecting the crankcase to the oil reservoir has a rubber check valve in it that only allows air to pass into the reservoir and not oil to go back into the crankcase but since it's rubber, it decomposes over many years until there's nothing left of it. Then you can get oil going into your cylinder and burning with the fuel. Best case scenario, the saw smokes like hell and runs very very rich. Worse than that, the excessive oil and the viscosity it produces at the rings causes the piston to cease. This is usually reversible in that there is no permanent damage and the saw can be restarted when things cool off but not before cleaning out the cylinder by flushing the oil out with gasoline first. Of course if you don't know what's going on, you may just burn through your oil really fast and then destroy your chain, bar, clutch, etc because there's no oil left.
To remedy this you have to remove both side covers of the saw, the grab bar and then the small triangular plate that forms the bulkhead of the oil reservoir. Then you have to unscrew this silver plug that has the bore drilled into it. Then you have to remove the filter screen from that, install a new rubber check valve, install a makeshift screen and put the whole thing back together again.
I learned all of this from the following video and just did the whole job today.
I just wanted to add some notes that were not covered in the video:
1) In order to gain access to the oil reservoir, you need to remove the clutch assembly, sprocket, etc. This rotates on the same shaft as the flywheel so you need to jam the flywheel with a screwdriver and use a spanner tool. However I don't own a spanner tool and don't want to buy one just for this crap. So a sloppy solution to the problem is take a set of needle nose pliers, which most people do have, separate the teeth until they fit into the holes on the clutch assembly, then grab the pliers with a set of vice grips, making a thing that looks like a torque wrench. This works.
2) The video shows a few replacement valves. I went for the second, shorter one but found it didn't fit in the hole. I fixed this problem by using a metal drill bit to bore out a larger hole until the valve did fit. I don't see this being a problem.
3) In the video he says get some screen and cut a new filter out of it. When I popped the original screen I did it carefully until it just started to de-hinge. If you do this right, you can get the valve under the screen and installed and then use a screwdriver or toothpick to go around the screen's circumference and carefully jam it back under the little metal retaining ring. It looks just like factory after you're done and you don't need to do anything homebrew.
4) I re-used the old reservoir gasket because it was in good shape and it didn't leak on re-assembly. However the auto-oiler didn't appear to work. On the plus side, the manual oiler did work and I was no longer burning oil in the cylinder with a full tank. I suspect the new valve fits pretty tight and not a lot can get through either way, making it less like a valve and more like a plug. I recommend ordering the first, longer valve shown in the video since that's what he used and it fit better. Otherwise you'll have to bore out the hole and get the size right so that air can actually pass through.
5) If your auto-oiler doesn't work and the manual one does, you have to hit the oil lever pretty hard and fast to cause oil to squirt out the hole and onto the chain. If you hit it too slow, it will just gurgle and do nothing. Also if you're not getting any oil out, rotate the oil flow screw at the top right of the oil reservoir counter-clockwise to open it up more. The video says 1 turn is enough but I just opened mine up like 3 turns so I could actually get some flow.
All in all, I'm pleased with the results as I can still oil the bar manually before each cut and the saw isn't burning oil anymore. Before I had to run the saw empty and oil the bar manually before every cut, which just isn't worth it, so having the manual oiler at least is worth the time I spent to repair it.
To remedy this you have to remove both side covers of the saw, the grab bar and then the small triangular plate that forms the bulkhead of the oil reservoir. Then you have to unscrew this silver plug that has the bore drilled into it. Then you have to remove the filter screen from that, install a new rubber check valve, install a makeshift screen and put the whole thing back together again.
I learned all of this from the following video and just did the whole job today.
I just wanted to add some notes that were not covered in the video:
1) In order to gain access to the oil reservoir, you need to remove the clutch assembly, sprocket, etc. This rotates on the same shaft as the flywheel so you need to jam the flywheel with a screwdriver and use a spanner tool. However I don't own a spanner tool and don't want to buy one just for this crap. So a sloppy solution to the problem is take a set of needle nose pliers, which most people do have, separate the teeth until they fit into the holes on the clutch assembly, then grab the pliers with a set of vice grips, making a thing that looks like a torque wrench. This works.
2) The video shows a few replacement valves. I went for the second, shorter one but found it didn't fit in the hole. I fixed this problem by using a metal drill bit to bore out a larger hole until the valve did fit. I don't see this being a problem.
3) In the video he says get some screen and cut a new filter out of it. When I popped the original screen I did it carefully until it just started to de-hinge. If you do this right, you can get the valve under the screen and installed and then use a screwdriver or toothpick to go around the screen's circumference and carefully jam it back under the little metal retaining ring. It looks just like factory after you're done and you don't need to do anything homebrew.
4) I re-used the old reservoir gasket because it was in good shape and it didn't leak on re-assembly. However the auto-oiler didn't appear to work. On the plus side, the manual oiler did work and I was no longer burning oil in the cylinder with a full tank. I suspect the new valve fits pretty tight and not a lot can get through either way, making it less like a valve and more like a plug. I recommend ordering the first, longer valve shown in the video since that's what he used and it fit better. Otherwise you'll have to bore out the hole and get the size right so that air can actually pass through.
5) If your auto-oiler doesn't work and the manual one does, you have to hit the oil lever pretty hard and fast to cause oil to squirt out the hole and onto the chain. If you hit it too slow, it will just gurgle and do nothing. Also if you're not getting any oil out, rotate the oil flow screw at the top right of the oil reservoir counter-clockwise to open it up more. The video says 1 turn is enough but I just opened mine up like 3 turns so I could actually get some flow.
All in all, I'm pleased with the results as I can still oil the bar manually before each cut and the saw isn't burning oil anymore. Before I had to run the saw empty and oil the bar manually before every cut, which just isn't worth it, so having the manual oiler at least is worth the time I spent to repair it.
