I am going to start a thread on getting my Vintage Homelite running again. The saw was a local Craigslist find. Not many Vintage saws to be found around these parts. This repair is going to involve a lot of new things for me. I am kind of new working on 2 cycles and never had to try to birddog vintage parts before. I have worked on a lot of old ford tractors before, but parts for those things are everywhere. This is where I am:
Well since I have spark and she will pop and run with a little gas in the muffler port, it's time for a carb rebuild. The first thing I learn is that my saw has a brown carb on it. From what I gather these were good carbs but they are no longer in bussiness. So getting a kit may be a challange. The 7-21 will also take a Tilly carb which was used on a LOT more saws and kits are everywhere for those. I did find that Joe Salva in mo. might be reproducing kits for these old Brown's. When I contacted him he told me he is making two types of Brown kits,....the CP and the CS. He said to send him pics of the carb, and he could probably tell you which one it is. And that I would need a good pics from the bottom and the sides. And on top of the carb should be stamped the type. Since I needed to take the Brown carb off the 7-21 to change the carb kit anyway. I decided to remove it so I could get the #'s off the top or if it was in real bad shape I would just change it over to a Tilly.
The first thing about these saws is that to get the carb off it is a lot easier to remove the reed valve plate and carb together. Here's the carb with the elbow to the air cleaner removed:
2 of the 3 screws that hold the reed plate in place are easy to remove. The 3rd one requires the handle to be removed from the saw.
First issue:
The handle housing was cracked at some point in the last 50 years.
The owner had run a sheet metal screw in place of the machine screw. I assume it was striped out. I can helicoil the case but I'm not sure how to do a repair in the handle casting. I'm looking for ideas.
Here is the 3rd reed plate screw that required the handle to be removed:
One thing I noticed is that when I looked into the throat of the carb and when I got it apart from the reed plate is that it had a lot of oil oozing out:
Before I take a carb apart I like to get the outside pretty clean:
As I got into the carb, it looked like this thing was filled with OIL. I'm not sure how the old guy did it, but I'm glad he did. There is no varnish or corosion anywhere. Just stiff diaphrams along with some fines. All pictures taken as it came apart: no cleaning:
Looking good. Great project.
One thing i would do, Even though
it has spark i would remove the points
and clean them with some fine sand paper
or replace them, reinstall and gap correctly.
Then you know your timing and ignition are
in good shape.
Since I'm still waiting on decals and carb kit from Sugar Creek, I am doing some farther disassembly and getting things cleaned up and ready for priming and paint.
I wanted to get the paint as close to original as possible as I could. That meant finding a part that the sun hadn't got to. The bottom of the tank looked great.
The flywheel cover yeilded quite a bit of the 1958 green color. Since this restore will involve wet slide decals I needed a clear coat over them as they don't like fuel and oil. This kind of complicates things because most clear coat will lift base enamels. Since I wanted to color match as well: it was off to my favorite auto/house paint store. These guys really know their stuff. I took them the tank and FW cover and they matched the colors PERFECT. They then mixed the 2 colors in Acrylic Lacquer AND put them in rattle cans for me. This will allow me to shoot a 2 part clear over the base and decals.
Wouldn't you know they even make 2 part catalized coatings in rattle cans now days (til the EPA takes over in 2011). If you look at the bottom of the can you can see that you push the stem which releases the hardener in the rattle can. It then must be used within a certain window. This clearcoat is extremely durable.
Looking good. Didn't realize you were
going this far with this saw. Nice handle
repair. I have never seen this type
of paint system. I thought laquer
paints were a thing of the past and
not for sale anymore do to the EPA.
