Chainsaw question for the tune-up experts

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53flyer

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Oct 21, 2009
175
Eastern WA
I'm trying to diagnose a chainsaw to figure out where to start irt fixing it. The basic issue is that it starts but wants to die pretty easy. There's a "sweet spot" with the trigger that generally keeps it running but when you pull the trigger close to max pwr the engine loses pwr and will die if I don't release the trigger a bit. I was planning on starting with a new fuel filter? Does it sound like the symptoms of a bad fuel filter or is there something else you would suspect? Thanks
 
Could be thats where I would start and also could be air leak...one thing at a time gas filter first.
 
southbound said:
What saw is it???

It's always a good time for a new filter..

Sounds like the carb needs to be reset............

that don't sound like a setting issue, more like fuel filter or air leak best case fuel filter and most the time it is.
 
southbound said:
Sounds to me like he needs to work the L screw....

lol I got 10 bucks doing nothing..
 
Sorry not a betting man... I always loose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still want to know more about the saw...

If it was sucking air wouldn't that make it race????

Carb may need a kit????
 
southbound said:
Sorry not a betting man... I always loose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still want to know more about the saw...

If it was sucking air wouldn't that make it race????

Carb may need a kit????

the trigger pull he is talking about sounds like fuel filter does the same thing on old GM cars.. but my next guess would be leaking around the carb gasket
 
southbound said:
I still want to know more about the saw...

It's the 18" Poulan 4018 and it's only 2yrs old. I supose I figured that since it worked perfectly fine for the first 1 1/2 season's of it's practically new life, it wouldn't be a carb but I suppose anything's possible.

Off track a bit but still a saw repair issue we dealt with last yr (with the 4200):
The 4200 was a CL buy for $100. I think it's around 15-20yrs old but it worked great until we noticed a gas leak starting (about 3-4 tank fulls into our use of it)... Upon further inspection it turned out that the fuel line was so old that the rubber was brittle and just falling apart. The fun part came when we realized that all the tubing that the saw shops carry wouldn't fit around the carb! The new tubings we were shown all had the same "outer diameter" as the old one but the inner diameter was smaller due to the walls of the new tubing being "thicker" than the original. The saw shops said we needed a new carb that would fit the new tubing's inner diameter. Have you ever worke with old saw's and ran into that problem?

Instead of a new carb we decided to heat the tubing up and "stretch" it onto the carb's fuel inlet. It sounded easy enough but trying to do it with the carb still on the saw meant there was barely room for my wife's fingers (no room for mine) so getting leverage was a real challenge. After about an hour (cough, cough) of working on it we finally got the tubing onto the carb. It fit fine onto the new fuel filter because the new filters are, of course, made to fit the tubing nicely. My only concern was that since the new tubing has a smaller inner diameter than the old tubing, the amount of fuel flow would be reduced. It hasn't seemed to be a problem yet though.
 
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