Skil 1629 type 3

Just found an old Skil 1629 type 3 for close to free. It's old, missing a lot of paint, but runs beautifully. Bought as a camp saw to be broken by an unnamed relative on an impending hunting trip (it won't be his fault, but I digress).

The muffler is cracked (read: broken with missing chunks of metal) at one of the mounts to the exhaust port. The mounting screws are both there, but one side of the muffler is floating about 1/8" away from the cylinder wall. Since phoning the local outdoor equipment store for an aftermarket replacement resulted in much laughter and sniggering, does anybody have one they wouldn't mind selling or otherwise parting with?

Off the topic of mufflers, is running this with a 50:1 mix used in modern saws a problem? The label on the saw says 16:1 mix with SAE30. I recall being told that it's safe to go with the mix ratio of the oil instead of the equipment.

Have you tried Baileys or Tractor Equipment?

They both have parts for most saws & would likely be less "elitist" about it not being a stihl/husky/dolmar etc. Failing that, Ebay is probably your best bet. Not sure Ive ever seen Skil parts on there though.


As for the mix question... I would personally add more oil. Maybe not right down to the full 16:1 (ive never even seen a saw with those specs) but at least 32:1 just to be on the safe side.


Good luck.

The saw is roughly the same thing as a Power Machinery PM 340. I think Power Machinery made the same saw for several different companies, and they all put their own labels on it, but I'm not a historian, could be wrong.

I struck out with Baileys, have not tried Tractor Equipment. It might help if I had cross-reference model numbers. Can anyone comment on who else might have made this saw (pic's attached)?

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I was given a 1629 a few years ago, it was missing the muffler also, I checked everywhere and could not find one so I built up one from scratch, not really all that hard to do if you can weld.
Pioneerguy600

There is a PM 340 muffler on ebay right now.


My PM 340:

I need a front handle for another Skil/ PM saw project.
Anyone have one?
Jim

pm 340

...been lurking for a couple of days, your saw is how I knew the 1629 was basically a PM 340. Nice job on the resto, btw. I'm amazed you did that with rattle-cans.

And thanks for the tip on ebay, I just grabbed it. I think the reason it broke is that there is no gasket between the port and the muffler.

If it's not in too bad of shape have someone you know or a decent machine shop TIG weld it back together. May be cheaper than buying one, espically if the life expectancy of the saw is going to be in question to begin with. 50-1 should be fine for that saw, unless you want to kill two birds with one stone and fog for mosquitoes while you cut wood! JJuday

got new muffler

The e-bay purchased PM340 muffler finally showed up. It fits perfectly, and has done a nice job of taming the beast. I'm very pleased.

The clutch was not disengaging due to a broken spring. I tried finding a new one, struck out. The spring had broken quite close to one end, so I stretched out a little of what was left and formed a new hook. It's not my first choice, but for now it will have to do. The clutch now disengages at idle.

Just before I put the new muffler on, I took a peek through the exhaust port at the cylinder wall, it looks polished (is it a chrome sleeve?), no scoring visible. Compression seems good, as it takes a good yank to get it to turn over. It's about as hard to pull as a little husky 51 I have here with very low hours, but I have no way of doing a proper test. I tried putting it through an 8" chunk of Birch and it cuts at least as well as the husky.

It has a tendency to die after maybe a minute or two of idling. This may be unnatural for it anyway, but I thought it should be able to idle basically indefinitely. I can restart it easily if I hold the throttle wide open and pull. I suspect the carb, but am open to suggestions. I've heard these had a Tillotson carb, but I'm not sure of model number. For a saw of this age, where does one look for a rebuild kit, or is this just a hopeless exercise?

stderr said:

The e-bay purchased PM340 muffler finally showed up. It fits perfectly, and has done a nice job of taming the beast. I'm very pleased.

The clutch was not disengaging due to a broken spring. I tried finding a new one, struck out. The spring had broken quite close to one end, so I stretched out a little of what was left and formed a new hook. It's not my first choice, but for now it will have to do. The clutch now disengages at idle.

Just before I put the new muffler on, I took a peek through the exhaust port at the cylinder wall, it looks polished (is it a chrome sleeve?), no scoring visible. Compression seems good, as it takes a good yank to get it to turn over. It's about as hard to pull as a little husky 51 I have here with very low hours, but I have no way of doing a proper test. I tried putting it through an 8" chunk of Birch and it cuts at least as well as the husky.

It has a tendency to die after maybe a minute or two of idling. This may be unnatural for it anyway, but I thought it should be able to idle basically indefinitely. I can restart it easily if I hold the throttle wide open and pull. I suspect the carb, but am open to suggestions. I've heard these had a Tillotson carb, but I'm not sure of model number. For a saw of this age, where does one look for a rebuild kit, or is this just a hopeless exercise?

Click to expand...

Should not be hard to find a carb kit for your saw, you have to find the maker and model of the carb to get a kit. Most of the 1629`s used a Tillotson HS carb but yours may or may not have that carb as chainsaw manufacturers were known to use just about any makers carbs even on saws made the same year. Pull off your airfilter cover and airfilter and you should be able to find the makers name on the carb.
Pioneerguy600

Lawnmowertech37 or Edgeandengine, will have that carb kit.
If by chance they don't try Stens or Rotary.
The Cylinder has an iron sleeve.
I'm degreeing the latest one I aquired, and hoping to make some timing and porting changes to it. I think there is quite a bit of gain to be had inside those engines, but this will be its own thread.
Jim

Skilsaw 1629 type 3, the saga continues...

After a little monkeying around with this saw, I notice it has some issues with idling. If the saw is tuned to idle with the bar clamped in a vise, it will plod along without too much issue. Occasionally it will flood to the point where it simply will not start. Pulling the plug out, and blowing the cylinder out (w. lungs, not a compressor) is the only way to get enough of the gas out to get it to start.

Things are different when I take the saw out of the vise and start it up. If I tilt the saw backward (bar at 45° above horizontal), the idle speeds up to the point that the clutch engages and the chain starts spinning. If I tilt the saw forward (bar at 45° below horizontal), the idle drops immediately and within a few seconds it dies. I can restart it (bar still tipped down) with one or two pulls and a little squeeze of the trigger, so my guess is it's fuel starved.

I should add that the fuel is fresh (50:1 stihl mix) and the saw seems to have lots of guts in the wood.

Is this saw of the vintage that there is no impulse line, and it more or less needs to be WOT in order to pull gas out of the tank when not sitting on a flat surface? Is there something else wrong?

If I have learned propperly from this site,,,,, a change in idle when you alter the pitch of the saw may mean an air leak in one of the seals.
Seals may or may not be easy to find.
Read Whisperers post for people to check with on parts.
At least take the carb apart and clean with some carb cleaner, you will probably notice a difference. Don't worry just take it apart slowly, pay attention to how it comes apart, put it back the same way.
Replace the fuel lines and filter
Compression and vacuum gauges are relatively inexpensive and can save you a lot of agravation during troubleshooting.
50:1, 40:1, 32:1 should be fine, just make sure to tune the carb to the mix you are going to be using.
old mixes were quantity, new mixes are quality of the oil
you may be able to find a member within a resonable distance who is willing to share knowledge/help you with some of this.

Good luck
Have fun
Make new friends
Keep us posted

Jerry

air leak

...been a while since I had a chance to tinker with the 1629.

Today I removed the clutch, flywheel, carb, and muffler in order to do a vac./pressure test. Unfortunately, the flywheel bolt rounded on me, even with a 6-point socket. I ended up using a dremel to grind most of it away, then a cold chisel to pop it off. The threads on the end of the crankshaft are slightly damaged, but easily cleaned up with a file.

I blocked the intake and exhaust ports with old innertube, and faced the next problem: no impulse line. In order to test, I need a fitting for the plug. I attempted to force one of the bigger barbs into the plug opening and at least try to pull vacuum. I know it's lazy, but I'm trying to avoid a special trip to Home Despot in order to by the bits for a proper connection.

Pulling a vacuum was a bit of a joke, I couldn't get even a little vacuum to hold. I tried being a little more forceful tightening down the muffler and carb bolts, then added an extra bit of innertube around the barb into the plug hole. No vacuum. I tried putting a little bar oil around the oil seals to see if it would disappear as I tried pulling vacuum. Nope, that's not it.

Next I tried pressurizing to 10psi. This was much more impressive. Oil sprayed out of the seam between the case halves. This case seems to be split top to bottom rather than side to side. The seam runs through the centre line of the crank shaft. Next, I removed the bar oil cap, shone a light inside, and tried again. Cool, a big stream of bubbles coming up through the bar oil. This explains where all the oil I keep seeing on the muffler is coming from. A moot point, but the oil seals seem fine, though it's hard to tell with air blowing out through the sides of the crankcase.

The carb says Tillotson, 1963, so this is probably quite an old-timer. The P&C look very clean, and the muffler is brand new. That's where the good news ends. The flywheel has two broken fins, and the bar-oil cap is chipped quite badly. The bar is quite warn too. The chain looks nearly brand new. My guess is, every seal needs replacing, the carb needs a rebuild, and the fuel line needs replacing (it's got big cracks in it).

I have a couple of 50cc saws I'm already quite happy with, one of which is sporting a new P/C, oil-seal and mod'd muffler. I'm not sure I'm up for a resto. on a saw I may never use, unless it's going to make a killer bucking saw. It's way too heavy to be a good limbing saw, even with the stubby little 16" bar on it.

The question is, is this saw worth the investment? If not, does anybody want a piece of it?

Lawerence, I copyed your PM to the open forum, I hope that was OK.

stderr said:

Hi,

Since you rebuilt your PM340 from the ground up, where did you get bearings, oil-seals, gaskets, fuel lines and that sort of stuff?

When you painted yours, I assume you split the case and had everything bead-blasted or something to get it completely cleaned up?

Did you get a new bar, or were you able to refurbish the old one? If refurbished, what did you use for paint? The chain looks almost new, but can rotate side-to-side quite a lot, even with proper tensioning.

I've noticed the bar-oil reservoir is leaking quite badly, possibly from the oiler, definitely from the seam just below the fill cap. I suspect it needs a new gasket, and the oiler could do with new seals.

I have also noticed quite a change in idle speed depending on the orientation of the saw, so my guess is (haven't tested yet) that the crank-case is not air-tight.

This may sound really silly, but did you ever find a service manual for it?

Is there a felling dog available for this saw, or would I have to make one from scratch?

Kind regards,
Lawrence

Click to expand...

Hey Lawrence,
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you, been super busy at work and doing some camping when not at work!
My Skil just sits on a shelf in my den, so I did not bother replacing the bearings or seals (It was a low hour saw, so I would assume they are fine).But any bearing house should be able to get you bearings & seals.
The only gasket on the saw(I think) is the one for the oil pump. For that I made a new one.
The case halves are just sealed with fuel-proof sealer(Yamabond, Hondabond,etc.) The fuel line was just off the shelf Tygon line, with a rubber gromet through the tank. the carb was also rebuilt.
The saw was totally disassembled , The recoil starter was blasted, but that was only because it needed a welding repair. The other parts were hand sanded and primed, then multiple light coats of color then clear. I Just used spray cans, and took my time.
The bar was just sanded and painted using a bar stencil from "Sugar Creek Saws"
If the chain has too much side to side movement, the bar most likely needs to be dressed, thats assuming you have the proper gauge chain (.050, .058, .063)
Mine has .050" I would think that yours should too.
Measure the bar groove with a feeler gauge. I use a steel block & anvil to lightly hammer the bar rails back to the proper width, then file the rails square.
I have never seen a service manuel or spike for the saw. But there are parts on Ebay from time to time.
Jim

What is that?

Why, why why can't I just leave stuff alone? It's in pieces now. I've cleaned it up for the most part, rebuilt the carb, purchased new fuel line, and will start re-assembling once I find a source for Threebond 1194, or equivalent. I don't think I'll go so far as to paint it, but I do want it to work.

Now that it's apart, I can see a small hole at the front of the crank-case, near the oil reservoir. If I flip the case half over, there's a cavity underneath that gets formed between the case and the manual oiler plate. It does not appear to have anything to do with the oiler, but just looks like a small sealed chamber connected to the crank chamber. I've attached pics showing what I mean. I don't understand the purpose of this. Is it to do with getting the right amount of charge into the crankcase? More importantly, can I just plug it?

err, bump?

No takers on the mystery hole? :monkey:

Is this something I should just know?

Does excess oil collect in this cavity? Nah, that can't be it, where would it go after filling? Is it possible that since the saw was originally intended to run on 16:1 mix, that that actually is it? The hole looks too small for fuel/air mixture to circulate effectively in and out of the cavity (I'm guessing).

Mystery hole

Well, given that nobody seems to know the answer, I'll just plug it up and see what happens. Looking at the casting, there's really no way that the chamber formed by the oiler and crankcase bottom would seal. The casting will be open, no matter what. I can't imagine why the crankcase would be designed with no seal.

I used a screw from a computer case, and dribbled a little Threebond 1194 on it before installing. I don't have a tap-set, but it did thread in with a little brute force. Good 'n tight.

Home made gasket for oiler:

I don't know what that hole is, but you're not going to leave it plugged like that are you?

I would think that theres some purpose for it or it would'nt be there. If it was'nt plugged before, I would just leave it be.

mystery hole

Yes, I intend to leave it plugged like that for now. I couldn't figure out what it was for, but there's no way to seal the crankcase with it there. On the bottom of the saw, there is a round lip about 1" in diameter that mates with the oiler body. The trouble is, the round lip is actually recessed so the gasket won't touch it, even after it's tightened down. This leaves a small sliver of a hole maybe 1.5"x0.030".

I speculated in one of the previous posts that it might be to allow mix oil to drain out. The factory mix ratio for this saw is 16:1 using 10W30. That high of an oil content, I suspect will build up in the crankcase, and I bet that hole allows the oil to drain out. I'm going to run this at 50:1 now, so *IF* I'm right, it's not needed.

If the saw just won't run right, I can always pull off the oiler body and remove the screw, retune and see if it helps. That will leave a permanent and deliberate air-leak in the case, which makes no sense to me at all.