I had a little arrangement with a neighbor who's an electrician. He re-wired a few things in my garage so I could have a dedicated plug for my Silvey sharpener and things like that and I would clean & tune-up his vintage Homelite XL-12.
The XL is in great shape, but needed a little TLC. The craftsmanship on this saw was refreshing: nice little copper tube with brass fittings to carry the bar oil, easily adjustable carb, etc. I see why these were so popular back in the day.
So, I dumped out the fluids, took the covers off, cleaned out all the oily dust. I put in a new fuel filter and carb kit too.
I filled it with my usual mix of 100LL avgas 32:1 with Mobil 2T premix oil. The saw started right up, but after about 10 or 15 seconds it died. I choked it for one pull, then pushed the choke off, she started right up and died again. I could kind of get it to keep running but it wasn't responding to either H or L needle adjustments.
It was getting late, so I figured I'd get back to it the next day. Well, the next day, I tried again and the same pattern happened. Then, I had an idea: what if this old gem of saw was not liking the 100 octane fuel?
There was only one way to find out. I made a mini-batch of 32:1 mix using 87 octane pump gas with the Mobil 2T. I poured out the avgas mix, ran it dry, then added the pump gas mix. She fired right up, idled really smoothly, and after some L and H needle tweaks, revved right up and then idled back down. I brought it out back and cut some cookies to fine tune the mixture and it just kept running great the whole time.
I've been struggling to get a Stihl 050AV running smoothly: maybe it's the avgas?
The XL is in great shape, but needed a little TLC. The craftsmanship on this saw was refreshing: nice little copper tube with brass fittings to carry the bar oil, easily adjustable carb, etc. I see why these were so popular back in the day.
So, I dumped out the fluids, took the covers off, cleaned out all the oily dust. I put in a new fuel filter and carb kit too.
I filled it with my usual mix of 100LL avgas 32:1 with Mobil 2T premix oil. The saw started right up, but after about 10 or 15 seconds it died. I choked it for one pull, then pushed the choke off, she started right up and died again. I could kind of get it to keep running but it wasn't responding to either H or L needle adjustments.
It was getting late, so I figured I'd get back to it the next day. Well, the next day, I tried again and the same pattern happened. Then, I had an idea: what if this old gem of saw was not liking the 100 octane fuel?
There was only one way to find out. I made a mini-batch of 32:1 mix using 87 octane pump gas with the Mobil 2T. I poured out the avgas mix, ran it dry, then added the pump gas mix. She fired right up, idled really smoothly, and after some L and H needle tweaks, revved right up and then idled back down. I brought it out back and cut some cookies to fine tune the mixture and it just kept running great the whole time.
I've been struggling to get a Stihl 050AV running smoothly: maybe it's the avgas?