A while back I acquired a bunch of Stihl leaf blowers to repair (formerly used in a city maintenance fleet), at the time I had no idea if any would run, all were in non-running condition. I managed to get one running about a month ago and sold it for a decent profit. Today I started to really go through them. I picked out one that checked out good, it had spark and good compression (around 100 psi). So that along with another identical one in hand (eventually it led up to 3 for parts, 2 were locked up from running straight gasoline which I poured out of their fuel tanks) I started to plug away at it. First off I started to give it a good cleaning, and i'm not just talking a rinse with the hose, when I plan to keep things for myself I go a bit overboard; I take it almost completely apart and in this case I used carburetor cleaner, paint thinner, and a pressure washer to get it as clean as I could. I cleaned the carburetor, flushed the fuel tank, blew out the fuel lines, picked up a new spark plug, and got out some green paint to freshen up the cover plastic which had been painted white quite some time ago and looked a bit rough. I put it all back together and made my first attempt at starting it. Of course, it wouldn't start and after several frustrating minutes I walked away from it and went to the internet to see if anyone else had ever had this problem when it has spark and good compression yet won't start. Sure enough there were numerous threads about the Stihl BR420 flooding very easily. I read that you only want to use choke for one pull (2 max) then start it without choke @ wide open throttle. Sure enough, it worked! So I learned a few things today, 1: there is a special way to start a BR420 and 2: Stihl leaf blowers look great in John Deere green. :thumbup1gif: Didn't get any before/during pictures but the after pic's sure look good. :thumbup1gif:
↧