How much will it cost to fix.......?

[Backyard Lumberjack]

Like you Agrarian, I have recently been hit up by friends to see if I could fix saws.

sometimes it is just best NOT to tell someone... that you just fixed your own chain saw. lol. "yep, pulled off the cylinder, put in new rings, upped the pulse line and fuel line/filter... and rebuilt my carb. tuned it up High jets and Low jets... and now idles perfectly... tops out with much more power, etc... where's the 'L'... lol, that's blah, blah... blah! the friends next comment most likely will be: "oh-h... so you know how to work on and fix chain saws!!? well, hey here is what mine does now, could you look at it ... maybe?'

I told a farmer friend of mine that I had recently got a vintage saw of mine to run and cut great after many years of just lying dormant in its carry case... then how " my 019T was acting up, fixed 'er right up... but I did this and that after some R&D online, service manual"... etc... "oh, so you know how to work on them, huh?" then he said, "well... I can't get mine to just run right. was thinking need to take it back... to the shop."

well, comment more so just for the heck of it, I would help this guy with about anything I could... but, he had just rec'd it back from the shop not too long ago. and he knows how to take care of equipment...

help someone and suddenly you may be in the chainsaw repair business. still, some of us love to meet a mechanical challenge head on.... so it goes!

 

[Agrarian]

I work on a lot of my neighbors equipment... Chainsaws, trash pumps, generators, lawn mowers, ATV's... I really don't ever charge them much for my labor. I feel that it will come back to help me if I ever need anything in return from them. I do get a lot of free cheese from the neighbor who works at the cheese processing plant, and usually when I charge them an amount, they pay me more than I ask for. I probably work for around $10 per hour. 50% of the time, a neighbor will call me and I can diagnose over the phone, they bring it over and they wait for me to get it repaired. Maybe one of these days, when I retire, I might try to do this for a source of income... But, until then, I'll just stick to helping folks for cheap.

I agree and for friends I do not charge except for the cost of any parts I have to purchase. Lately though I am getting requests from friends of friends (i.e. strangers) and I have limited time to work on my own saws, let alone someone elses. The extra money is tempting as it is used to feed my chainsaw habit.

 

[Backyard Lumberjack]

I agree and for friends I do not charge except for the cost of any parts I have to purchase. Lately though I am getting requests from friends of friends (i.e. strangers) and I have limited time to work on my own saws, let alone someone elses. The extra money is tempting as it is used to feed my chainsaw habit.

>The extra money is tempting as it is used to feed my chainsaw habit.

egg-actly! recently a friend inquired if I could [would] cut some trees, prune on fence line... nice easy job, nice easy $$... don't have to do anything but cut n drop! I thot, hmmm sure would be nice to offset the costs of current saw project and BB upgrade, etc...

 

[RIDE-RED 350r]

I myself enjoy a bit of horse trading too!

One of the saws I have fixed that was passed to me by a friend belongs to a small tree service outfit he works for on the side. I am acquainted with the owner, and he is a good guy. This saw had been sitting in one of the junk sheds for quite some time and all hope was lost on it. It's now fixed and working well...

I told my friend that I'm looking for a blown up or otherwise needing repair 394/395 project and maybe we could work some sort of horse trade out on the next repair... You know, instead of giving me money, I would take a builder for myself..

 

[Conquistador3]

The only pieces of power equipment I don't own I fixed are my uncle's brushcutters and my neighbor's lawnmower.
If fixing the brushcutters makes no economic sense his typical reply is "Throw that away and buy me a new one: I want to spend X". Tired of fiddling with that infernal McCulloch, I now bought him a second hand four stroke Honda which I hope will last more than two seasons before needing a complete teardown.
My neighbor has rights over the wood behing our house so I do her a few works for free, like fixing that mower and cutting down the odd tree. In return I get free passage and all the wood I may need. I say we are even.

 

[grizz55chev]

I work for beer, now have enough to last for a month or two unless I get a few friends to help me drink it. When people find out you can fix their machines, all of a sudden you have more work than you want. Luckily I enjoy doing this and I'm now retired so it gives me something to do other than surfing the web.

 

[K&R Performance & Repair]

So word is starting to get out that I work on chainsaws and people will come by with their saw that doesn't run and ask "How much will it cost to fix it?". For those of you who do this regularly, how do you answer them?

Do you ask what the max they would spend is when they drop it off?
Do you charge for an estimate because you do some minimal testing before giving a dollar figure?
How do you handle those cases that you know one thing has to be fixed but once fixed, it was hiding one or more other expensive repairs?

I ask because I have a saw that I took in to repair. I told the guy, from the description of the failure, it sounded like a carb rebuild and/or a carb boot so it should be under $100. Well, what I actually found was that 1 of the 4 crankcase bolts on the clamshell had broken and fallen out. Another crankcase bolt was completely missing. Once that was fixed it passes the pressure test but fails the vacuum test. I then figure out that the carb boot is not sealing well and needs replacing.

When dealing with these two issues, I found that the sparkplug needs replacing, the ignition wire is cut into 3 pieces, an antivibe rubber is destroyed, the sparkplug boot has the remains of an old sparkplug cap embedded in it, and the throttle linkage will only allow the throttle to go to 1/3 open.

If this is what you guys deal with daily, my hat's off to you!

Always tell them if they want it fixed that’s fine however you either charge a ‘FLAT’ or an ‘HOURLY’ (I usually stick to hourly people usually asking for your service hardly know how to use a chain saw let alone “service it normally”) rate to Figure out the problem. Then after that is done discuss parts and hrs/rate to fix the saw itself. That easy. Truly.

 

[huskydave]

I deal with the same good people all the time, mostly service work on name brands but I can fix almost anything. I would bend over backwards for them in most cases. Repair work is a tough business. I am glad I don't do it full time. If something is not worth a lot I will take a non refundable deposit before touching it personally. I charge for diagnosis, this can take up a lot of time, especially if mr homeowner was messing around and they lied to me, this happens sometimes. I stand behind my work but only If Im the only one doing the maintenance. I get a lot of people that go to a so called certified tech and they can't fix an issue and then they hear about me. I do a lot of things that others simply won't do or they don't have the skills to do.

 

[pioneerguy600]

When they bring in a saw mostly torn down with the bits and pieces all tossed into a 5 gallon bucket or a cardboard box, tell them it will cost as much as as new saw for you to figure out what is wrong with it. and twice as much to fix it. Been there and done it far too many times, missing parts, broken bits are easily overlooked until they are needed for reassembly.