The 024 lives!
Since I made you suffer through pictures of my beat up cylinder I thought I would post the results. Lakeside, I had the best intentions of honing it like you and others have suggested. I bought a hone, but it was too big. I know, I'm a num-nuts. Anyway, I was too impatient so I decided to go ahead without the hone. I did get a new Golf piston, which by the way I'm not that thrilled about in retrospect. Maybe they're supposed to be this way, but to get it to fit over the end of the rod I basically had to whack it with my fist until enough piston metal scraped away that it would line up with the wrist pin. I would give it a couple hits, back it out blow out the aluminum fragments that got scraped up, and go at it again. After about 5 minutes of this, I got the thing on. The little clips were my next challenge, as I went through 4 of them to get 2 installed. Sproing!!! The other two are somewhere hiding in my garage. That finally done, I eased on the cylinder, and put it all back together only to find out that the carb was packed solid with sawdust at the gas inlet. Of course it took me 15 minutes to get the linkage off the carb. I later found out that it's easier to get it off if you take the handle apart first. This is all a learning process for me you see.... So after going through the carb and finally getting it all back together, it fired up pretty reliably. It's measuring 150lbs compression cold. I guess that's okay for a non-honed, semi-scored, cluelessly-installed piston & cylinder. So we'll see if my "pro repairs" last if I ever get to actually cut some wood with it!
By the way, here's a cylinder I have. It doesn't seem to have any aluminum deposits left on it as I removed those with toilet bowl cleaner (no muratic acid available at the time). But there's still visible vertical scoring as you can sort of see. Is this cylinder a lost cause, or do you think honing and a new piston/rings will bring it back to life? By the way, here's s dumb question. If the cylinder is in good shape you have rings that seat well to it, why does it matter if the piston itself has some scoring or is not perfectly smooth? I always see advice suggesting that you can revive a scored saw by removing the aluminum from they cylinder, and getting new rings and a piston. But why not skip the piston and just do the other stuff. Thanks!
