2022, a year for finishing old projects

I've got a lot of old projects hanging around, mostly it's just laziness, stuff got started and I lost interest.

Meanwhile we're trying to clean up around the house, it's easy to let your stuff take over and when you've got a small house it gets to be a problem quickly.

A good example is my old Echo chainsaw. We got that saw back in the 1980s, it literally fell off a truck in front of my parents house. We took it to camp and at some point I think I ran some bad gas in it. It'd run but it needed choke to be able to do anything.

I brought it back to our house, took it apart and ordered a carb kit. Then I got distracted and you know how it is. Its been here so long I don't remember how long ago I brought it here, before 2016 certainly.

The other day I was cleaning up in the garage and noticed it. I was just about to put it into the trash but for some reason decided I'd take one try at getting it back together. If you've never worked on a chainsaw it's much harder than a lawnmower because everything is small and fits together just so. I figured this would be an extra hard job because it'd been so long since I took it apart.

Imagine my surprise when the reassembly only took around 3 hours. About half that time was spent digging around to find bits and wondering what some other bits I had went to. I *think* I'd disassembled a few other things in that period because I've got some random bits that I can't identify.

Anyhow after a little carb tweaking it runs great. This is an Echo 510EVL which is about the same size as my Husqvarna but since the body is all metal it's heavier. I think its got a little more torque too, it seems to power through stuff a little better.

The entire time we've had it this hand guard has been broken. I used my Harbor Freight plastic welder to stitch the parts back together. The black is actually plastic from the welder kit that I added it, I also embedded some metal window screen into the repair which should make it pretty strong.

It does need one more bolt to attach the handle to the body, that's been missing the whole time we've had it and will make it much more comfortable to use.

Did I really need another saw? No, my Husky does everything I need but once in awhile it's handy to have a backup and I do hate throwing away something that still has life in it.

Onward to the next old project!

That pressure sprayer

 I mentioned dad's pressure sprayer the other day. It's for an upcoming project I haven't told you about yet. I've been holding back because it's moving slowly but I'll have something soon.

Anyway lets talk a little more about that sprayer, it's been a bit of an adventure.

It's a Troy-Bilt 2700psi sprayer, kind of low end, they make these up to nearly 4000psi. This one is actually made, as far as I can tell, by Briggs and Stratton who also make the engine.

Dad bought it from a friend of his about 3 years ago. What he didn't tell me is that his friend hadn't run it in at least 5 years. Oh and it was stored with gas in it. The gas smelled BAD.

I'm not good at remembering to take pictures, this one was so I could remember how to put the linkages back in place on the carburetor. This carb has an "automatic choke" thats the rod running across the front of the engine, to the upper left in the picture. Over by the engine theres a thermostat that must move when the exhaust gets hot and opens the choke.

I wish I had taken a picture of the inside of the carb, the needle was stuck hard into the seat and there was some kind of goo in the gas intake so it wouldn't flow fuel. This picture was taken after the 3rd or 4th time I went into the carb. If you look carefully to the right of the carb you can see that I installed a fuel shut off. Ideally if we remember to shut off the gas after every use we can save a world of hurt in the future.

The biggest problem in working on a gas powered sprayer is that you have to have water running into the pump whenever the engine is running or you'll burn the pump out. The problem there is that the pump is constantly trying to build pressure, especially on a machine that hasn't run for 8 years and has a stuck bypass valve. I eventually dismounted the pump to make working on the thing easier.

The pump mounts up under the engine, the bolts that secure it actually secure the engine also so dismounting it means you need spacers to hold the engine, otherwise the bolts are too long. I used some big sockets for the job.

I did finally get it running when I realized that it won't start unless there is at least a half tank of gas...

This is the quick connect for the spray nozzles, it lives on the end of the spray gun. It's really just an air chuck. Deep inside, where you can't see, is a 9mm ID o-ring. Remember that, it's 9mm. I couldn't find that published anywhere. The o-ring on this one fell out at some point and the water would spray out everywhere until I replaced it.

I've always hated garden hoses, the connections are always leaking. The manual for the sprayer says "Apply silicone grease to connections". I got to thinking and remembered I had a tube of Sil-Glyde, for lubricating the pins on brake calipers. A little dab on each of the connections and suddenly I had a garden hose that didn't leak. You can see the red garden hose washer in the picture. It's nothing special, I got it at the hardware store and it leaked like crazy until I put Sil-Glyde on it.

The other thing in the picture is the inlet screen. I wish I'd taken a picture of the old one before I threw it away but it was NASTY and the screen was all broken. Replacements were less than $5 for 2 at the hardware store.

They sell an o-ring and screen kit for these but my Harbor Freight o-ring kid had all the o-rings I needed and the screens were cheap. For less than they want for the kit I have enough screens for 2 machines and enough o-rings for probably 10 or 15 of them...