After 40 pulls on the starter and blisters between his fingers, my neighbour threw it at the garage post. He gave it to me and said, it will probably start............ New bent up shaft. speedy
........................Keep your blades sharp......................
I don't know why some operators are such idoits. All they got to carry it to some one that knows how to repair them.
It like my brother's former boss. He had a brand new walk behind mower that quit running. He tried and tried to start. Finally he took a sledgehammer to it. Then for some reason he decided to check the gas tank. It was only out of fuel. <LOL>
Speedy, these are absolute mongrels to start and can appreciate why he did it. They have a large hole in the choke plate which allows it to start for idiots who cannot hear the slight rich stall on full choke on a regular line trimmer
Once the carby metering diaphragms stiffen - expect 20+ pulls.
Solution is to epoxy most of the hole in the choke plate & new metering diaphragm
The metal shaft is so thin that you can just bend it back straight over your knee - its just a flex cable down the shaft - not a broken solid drave shaft
Just wondering what the actual model number is. I have used Homelites for years and never had a kickback. Matter of fact I prefer my old Homelite over many home owner straight shafts as it has a longer shaft which helps out my back since I am 6 foot tall and do a lot of ditch work.
I don't have a choke on mine anymore due to obsolete carburetor that had to be replaced so it is a little harder to start as I got to manually prime it.
AVB, not sure exactly but one which kicked back on me was a HLT25CDNB, another was a Ryobi straight shaft identical to speedy's but ryobi - RLT25CD ????
Worth noting these have no clutch - can't recall a homelite/ryobi one with this engine with a clutch kicking back on me
Ah I see yes the ones without a clutch and a blade will have problems. I repaired one where the user was using a tri arc blade and everytime you hit something solid it would oscillate until you shut it down due to the flex shaft and the lack of a clutch. It the weight of the attachmet that is the problem as it causes the flex shaft to twist torque.
Personally I wouldn't have brush cutter setup without a clutch; they just plain dangerous. Using a string trimmer head is not so bad but a saw blade is.
Same, would never use one with a blade attachment and no clutch.
I like using the ones without a clutch as it is good for finicky bits where you can come in a basically idle and still cut.
The main thing with those model homelites is the carby paired with the clutchless design - along with my insistence not to rev a cold engine.
Me starting one goes like this:
Prime, choke, pull 10 times.
Fires and revs flat out (throttle kicker built into choke), blip throttle straight away, choke springs comes off, throttle goes back to idle.
Promptly stalls as its so lean. Put choke back on, pull nothing. Then make the mistake of trying full throttle no choke. Kick back, kick back. Try no throttle no choke - kick, kick.
Leave it 5 minutes and put choke on fire it up and rev the living hell out of it for 2 minutes until it will idle.
With my carby mod:
Prime, pull 3 times
Fires and runs at a slow idle
Manually push choke up slightly and maintain a fast idle for 30 seconds
Blip throttle and let it idle another minute before running.
They run that lean when cold anyway they still don't smoke with the choke nearly full on. This is with full carby check, clean and kit on pretty much mint condition machines
I run full ester synthetic at a 'rich' 50:1 (about 45:1) so I don't worry about idling 2 strokes as much as I would with a higher ash mineral oil clogging things up
