Getting the starter spring back in on an Easy2Start MS250

[kylemorley]

So now I am really in a mess. Got up my courage to pull the little clip holding the cord rotor down and the starter spring went "sproing". The long recoil spring the rewinds the starter cord, not the heavy spring in the E2S module, that is.

Can't figure out how to get it back in. There's no recess for it on the cord rotor side, to prevent it from expanding once it has been wound up, and there is a recess in the starter cover but its down in the bottom of the cover, so it is almost impossible get wind the spring in to it since it the spring has to go in at a sharp angle which means it keeps coming undone . Stihl literature is strangely silent on the subject, as are the numerous "Replace the starter cord" videos on YouTube.

There's got to be some simple may - surely Stihl doesn't secretly hate its customers so much. Can anyone tell me what it is?

 

[Chris-PA]

I've never worked on one for that saw, but they are all pretty similar. I carefully wind them up in my hand, keeping them as tight as I can. When they are all wound up then I drop them into the housing - they will stay in there nicely. You must wind it tight enough that the outside diameter is small enough to drop into the recess.

This is a shot of a different saw which hopefully is similar. In this shot the inside is not centered as it should be and I had to bend it a bit to fix that - otherwise the pulley will not fit into it correctly.

It takes some patience and hand/finger strength, and a supply of good swear words will help too.

 

[old-cat]

I've never worked on one for that saw, but they are all pretty similar. I carefully wind them up in my hand, keeping them as tight as I can. When they are all wound up then I drop them into the housing - they will stay in there nicely. You must wind it tight enough that the outside diameter is small enough to drop into the recess.

This is a shot of a different saw which hopefully is similar. In this shot the inside is not centered as it should be and I had to bend it a bit to fix that - otherwise the pulley will not fit into it correctly.

It takes some patience and hand/finger strength, and a supply of good swear words will help too.

Just like easy peasy!!!! HaHaHa

 

[milkman]

Want me to post that link again?

 

[kylemorley]

Turns out Stihl has a special tool, for about $20, just for recompressing and installing old springs which have popped out (new ones come already compressed which is why many Stihl mechanics automatically replace the spring if it gets undone). Stihl says the spring can be recompressed by hand, but I found it pretty well impossible due to the depth of the housing.

The solution turns out to be pretty simple - use two sets of hands, one to work the spring into position, and the other to hold down the spring which has already been compressed

Oh, one other oddity I noticed. My old spring, if laid out on the floor, takes an "S" shape, with both ends curved in the opposite direction to the other rather than the round spiral I am used to. This makes if very hard to get started as the spring is being bent opposite to its inclination. I assume this must be deliberate on the part of Stihl to get more power out of the spring?

 

[XSKIER]

The $20 tool is to use both hands? Did you buy the tool? Did you have a buddy help you install it? It's kind of unclear what happened here.

 

[kylemorley]

My solution was to get a friend to help, and it worked very well. We put the cover on a small cafe table so we were sitting on opposite sides, and it went very smoothly. The compressor is one of those things that exist in the parts book but no shop has ever seen let alone stocked, and you can buy a new spring, already compressed, for less than the tool.

Oh, the reason my spring popped out was I removed the cord rotor while there was still tension on the spring since something inside was jammed and keeping the cord from rewinding. If I had spent a little more time trying to get the cord wound back in and pulled a few loops off the rotor I could have lifted the rotor off the spring, and the spring would have just sat there.

 

[GrassGuerilla]

As a grass guy I've dealt with quite a few recoils over the years. Some are easily field serviceable (Kohler command pro for instance) some, not so easy. First step is to control your desire to smash it with a hammer. And as Old-Cat suggested a good supply of curse words seems to lubricate the matter. A nice climate controlled work area also seems to help more than it would seem. Either freezing your nuts off or sweat rolling into your eyes will affect your blood pressure, triggering that urge with the hammer... Just me? Usually it's just a matter of remaining patient, and refusing to be outsmarted by a recoil. Unless of course you break the spring... Then it's hammer time.