What's your worst rebuilding #$@%!! "facepalm" mistakes?

Rugged made
Wesspur
Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Most aftermarket circlips are in a bright red plastic baggie, stuffed in the backside of the piston, along with the wrist pin. They are bright red so you'll notice them.
I got in a hurry once on a 200T, and forgot to pull the little circlips baggie out.
It lasted about 8 seconds before it abruptly stopped running. It ruined the brand new piston and cylinder.
I've done that twice on K760's in the last 10 years, but that's in about 500 piston installs. Nonetheless, It still sucks.
 
One time while fastening one of the circlips in, it flipped out on me and went flying somewhere. Luckily I had extras (and the ones being replaced). While putting in the spare, I looked down and saw the missing one at the very bottom of the combustion chamber. I retrieved it with a magnetic screwdriver. That was sheer luck. Imagine what it could have done in rather short order flying around inside.
 
grizz55chev said:
I’ve done rebuilds and got excited to hear the darn thing run without putting the chain and bar on. Left the clutch cover off too, bad mistake, engine starts up, clutch spins off at high speed and scatters to the wind!:cool:
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that "scatters to the wind" doesn't mean a high speed impact with any of your body parts. :eek:
 
On the Husky 51 I just rebuilt that had almost zero compression, the mechanic before me made a dandy move. He neglected to use any Permatex cement or a cylinder gasket. Instead, he just bolted the jug onto the case, metal against metal. I have to wonder how long it took the piston and rings to seize up from the air gaps. I've never tried that. WDYT?
 
Since we're telling of other's mistakes:

The first case I split was a 5100s. The crank was locked up. If you recall, Dolmar had an issue with main bearings spinning in the pockets on those. The solution in the shop manual was "use glue". Well, the monkey that rebuilt that one followed the manual. With Loctite 401. That adhesive is not designed for fuel. Or heat. The loctite vaporized in the case and found it's way into all four lower end bearings, locking them up when the saw cooled.
 
I was working on two or three 023, 025 saws at the same time. Started putting carb, muffler and plastic on one. I had torqued the flywheel but I'd forgotten to tighten the ignition module bolts. Started right up but made terrible sounds and died quickly. The module had been pulled toward the flywheel and broke off half the fins. The good news was that I had a spare flywheel and that the module worked fine after a little cleanup and grinding down the dings. There comes a time in life when you need to make checklists
and leave notes to yourself.

1536286980518_IMG_20171016_134120_768.jpg 1536287154264_IMG_20171016_135616_349.jpg
 
TheTone said:
I was working on two or three 023, 025 saws at the same time. Started putting carb, muffler and plastic on one. I had torqued the flywheel but I'd forgotten to tighten the ignition module bolts. Started right up but made terrible sounds and died quickly. The module had been pulled toward the flywheel and broke off half the fins. The good news was that I had a spare flywheel and that the module worked fine after a little cleanup and grinding down the dings. There comes a time in life when you need to make checklists
and leave notes to yourself.

and leave notes to yourself.View attachment 673278 View attachment 673279
Click to expand...
Things certainly go downhill fast if something is forgotten with saws don't they? I've smeared off a couple cast in flywheel keys because I didn't tighten the nut enough.
 
I was inexperienced, impatient, and without the right tool to pull the flywheel off of my Mac 4-30 and so I decided to get it off using a less-tha-ideal "alternative" method ie. prying against the underside of the flywheel and not-so-gently hammering the end of the crankshift to try and get it unstuck. What I forgot to do though was put the nut back on so that the top of it was flush with the end of the crankshaft. So I hammered on the crankshaft without the nut on and this ended up pancaking the end/threads. I got the flywheel off but trashed the end of the crankshhaft to where the nut wont go back on because the end is too wide.

Total dumb**** thing to do
 
Not saw related, but......
When was in my 20's I was installing an automatic OD transmission in a Ford pickup, and I didn't get the torque convertor quite all the way on.
I was tightening the bell housing bolts up to the engine, which were getting tight. All of the sudden the bell housing popped loudly, and had it broken all the way around....... Luckily I was able to weld the case back together.
 
alexcagle said:
Not saw related, but......
When was in my 20's I was installing an automatic OD transmission in a Ford pickup, and I didn't get the torque convertor quite all the way on.
I was tightening the bell housing bolts up to the engine, which were getting tight. All of the sudden the bell housing popped loudly, and had it broken all the way around....... Luckily I was able to weld the case back together.
Click to expand...
...Ouch...
Kinda reminds me of that episode of Monster Garage that they filmed in Iraq as a support the troops thing. They were building a tricked out humvee w/ race motor and towards the very end when they first ran the engine it gave off a loud, unhealthy sound. Turned out that they failed to put fluid in the transmission and the flywheel shattered (or atleast thats what I think happened, its been years). Being that it was in Iraq they couldnt get another for that transmission and the build was deemed a failure :( Kind of a anti-morale boosting moment.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top