Wright GS 218

[buzz sawyer]

As promised, here are some details on the GS-218. First is the engine. The cutter is driven by a secondary piston and rod coming off the crank, 180 degrees from the main piston. The bottom of the secondary piston has three notches into which the cutter fits. The front nose section is the cylinder for the secondary piston. The cutter is held in place by a guide block.
The engine was in very good shape, I just had to get new crank seals.

The muffler is pretty cool. It also functions as the lower support for the saw. It does get hot and you have to be careful to not get burned as well as what you set it down on.

The carb is a float type. There are two “wick arms” that pick up and filter the fuel. The original material was kind of porous foam tube with coil springs inside to keep it open. They fell apart as soon as I touched it.
After considering alternatives, I decided to use wide cotton shoestrings. I fitted them over the springs and onto the center pick up, then wrapped wire around to seal the ends as was done originally. The fuel bowl is plastic, probably discolored. I was able polish it up pretty well. After cutting a few new sealing washers, I reassembled it – came out very well with no leaks.

The points looked almost like new and just needed a little clean up but I was really concerned with the ignition coil. The outer insulating wrap was hard and badly cracked. I did the same thing that I did on my Mall GP – coated it with RTV silicone, working it well under the cracked areas, then let it cure a couple days. I really didn’t know if this would work or not.

The main body is the fuel tank. The original finish was hammered aluminum so that’s what it got. The chrome plating on the handle was in bad shape so I sanded it clean and painted with the stainless appliance paint followed by a couple coats of poly.
Last was re-making the instruction decal. I found a photo on-line that gave me most of the wording and added a couple steps from my B520 that seemed applicable.
Imagine my surprise when this thing started on the third pull! I won’t be cutting with it – no need to, but it does sound great running.

saws 040 - YouTube

 

[WetBehindtheEar]

I'd love to see how the reciprocating piston fits into the bar/saw mechanism. Any chance you took photos of that?

Thanks again for sharing.

 

[mattinky]

+1, Thanks for sharing, that's one of the coolest projects I've seen in a while. Good work!

 

[heimannm]

Another nice project indeed, love the ingenuity of the old engineers.

If you make a cut with in, keep in mind that the reciprocating blade will not clear chips the way a chain does so you do have to add some motion yourself.

Mark

 

[Mr. Bow Saw]

Nice job,the saw looks great..:msp_thumbsup:

 

[leeha]

Another great job Buzz. But wow, What a messed
up fuel filter design. Never seen that before.




Lee

 

[buzz sawyer]

I'd love to see how the reciprocating piston fits into the bar/saw mechanism. Any chance you took photos of that?

Thanks again for sharing.

I'll get a shot of how they lock together. Really a very simple design - no tools needed.

Thanks for all the compliments. I had neglected to take any before photos but it was a mess from setting.

BTW - no room to reduce the squish on this one. Luckily our friend in KY had an OEM cyl gasket. Without it, the piston would hit the top of the chamber.

 

[buzz sawyer]

I'd love to see how the reciprocating piston fits into the bar/saw mechanism. Any chance you took photos of that?

Thanks again for sharing.

Here it is. The blade is held up and guided by an aluminum block with a hardened guide. The red handle is the lock pin the holds the guide up in place. Just below the red handle is a small lock for the lock pin. Pull the red handle out and the guide comes down, releasing the blade so it can be slid forward and out of the bar.

The blade has three tangs that fit into the bottom of the secondary piston. There is no seal to keep sawdust out of the piston but the piston and bore looked really clean.