I'm posing this in the hope that it can save someone else with a BR500 or BR600. I've spent so many hours trying to solve this and the internet was not quick to point to the correct solution.
So I bought a used BR600 for $200 that would not start figured it would be an easy project. Found the fuel pickup hose had fallen off the inside of the tank plug, took the time to replace all the fuel lines and and the blower fired up on the first pull, idled great and came up to power well. Seemed like a full on win. But after running WOT for maybe 3-5 minutes it would start to miss and then just die like you had pressed the kill switch. But then it would again start first pull, idle great and then run WOT for maybe one minute. In retrospect it's heat related which is why you get less good run time each start as the coil heats up.
I cleaned the carb, put in a new plug, did a carb rebuild kit, gapped the coil, adjusted the valve clearance all the no avail. The only thing left was the coil which the local dealer wanted $116 for, this made me keep trying other things for a few days including aftermarket coils from Amazon. They all had bad reviews but for $16 and free returns it was worth a shot. The bad reviews were right, the blower would not ever start with this coil. From what I could find there are zero 3rd party coils for this blower.
Here are pics of what my bad coil looked like. I found one YouTube video mentioning that Stihl coils with clear potting compound were an issue and the new ones have black potting. So I took a $116 gamble on a new coil from a dealer and instantly fixed the issue. I ran two full tanks of fuel yesterday with zero issues. When I was buying the new coil I asked the parts guy if this was a common issue and he reflexively said no, then as he was in the computer checking me out he said "well it does look like I sell a couple of these every few months so maybe it is an issue"
So if you are having issues like this and you have a clear potted coil, don't waste your time looking for 3rd party coils, suck it up and get an OEM one. It does look like they are on ebay for around $90 if you are not in a hurry and can wait for shipping.
So I bought a used BR600 for $200 that would not start figured it would be an easy project. Found the fuel pickup hose had fallen off the inside of the tank plug, took the time to replace all the fuel lines and and the blower fired up on the first pull, idled great and came up to power well. Seemed like a full on win. But after running WOT for maybe 3-5 minutes it would start to miss and then just die like you had pressed the kill switch. But then it would again start first pull, idle great and then run WOT for maybe one minute. In retrospect it's heat related which is why you get less good run time each start as the coil heats up.
I cleaned the carb, put in a new plug, did a carb rebuild kit, gapped the coil, adjusted the valve clearance all the no avail. The only thing left was the coil which the local dealer wanted $116 for, this made me keep trying other things for a few days including aftermarket coils from Amazon. They all had bad reviews but for $16 and free returns it was worth a shot. The bad reviews were right, the blower would not ever start with this coil. From what I could find there are zero 3rd party coils for this blower.
Here are pics of what my bad coil looked like. I found one YouTube video mentioning that Stihl coils with clear potting compound were an issue and the new ones have black potting. So I took a $116 gamble on a new coil from a dealer and instantly fixed the issue. I ran two full tanks of fuel yesterday with zero issues. When I was buying the new coil I asked the parts guy if this was a common issue and he reflexively said no, then as he was in the computer checking me out he said "well it does look like I sell a couple of these every few months so maybe it is an issue"
So if you are having issues like this and you have a clear potted coil, don't waste your time looking for 3rd party coils, suck it up and get an OEM one. It does look like they are on ebay for around $90 if you are not in a hurry and can wait for shipping.
