OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Finding and Swapping Idle Chatter USA made homelite chainsaw (circa 2003)

A couple of the guys I have been speaking to on the phone have asked about my saw I have been using So here she be.

Story goes, my wife was sick of me being lazy and paying somone to drop off a load of wood pre done, it was cutting deep into the shopping money and then one weekend about 8 months ago she brings this home from a garage sale for $50.

Initial testing and inspection netted a few minor problems:
- It was gutless
- It couldnt cut straight to save its life
- The clutch cover was leaking all the oil out when it was running.
- Wouldnt start when hot.

So after testing I did the following.

- Throw the spark arrestor mesh in the bin.
- Replace the chinese spark plug with a NGK variant
- Richen up idle circuit
- Flip the little metal thingy that goes between the bar anc chain cover over. (no more oil leaks)
- Throw out the crap OEM chain and put on a genuine stihl unit.
- Blow the air filter out with my little air compressor ( Grumpy)


Since then the only problem I have had is the start rope snapped. It is a great little saw and has cut a lot of wood, we have had the fire going since april and this unit has cut all the wood so far, all I have to do is roughly run over the chain with a file then go to town against anything, I mainly burn orange trees or in the colder months I use redgum.

Now some pics......

Cutting in a curve always means a blunt chain, Joe (blunter on one side than the other), but I'm sure you know that. If you keep the chain sharp it should cut well, but if you let it get blunt it burns the chrome off the teeth well back from the cutting edges, and from then on it won't hold an edge until you grind or file the edges right back to where the chrome has retreated to. That is especially a problem when you cut hard wood like redgum, a blunt blade runs really hot on that stuff. It is a bad idea to keep cutting when the saw stops being really sharp. Congratulations on never hitting dirt with it - I could never achieve that, cutting up fallen rotten trees. Could easily sharpen the saw three times in an hour's cutting, in that situation.

Looks like a decent saw, but I don't know about price and availability of parts.

I dont know about availability of parts either "hardware store junk" was what it was reffered to when I took in the bar and chain to get a new chain made. Not a model number in sight, either way I am rebuilding a stihl 039 that I found in a scrap pile to take this ones place.

Hello Joe Why do you say it is a Homelite? I don't see that name on it any place Cheers Joe

It was on the chainside, and its on the id plate on the handle, these days homelite is ryobi as well, They arent nearlly as good as the old homelite unfortunately.

^^Ditto^^

Homelite,Riobi,Husqvarna,craftsman,Woolworth name brand,craftsman(USA woolworth,MTD,Talon,Talon surefire,sUrLi,Hoover,Eureka.

And others are all made by TTI Americana...

Almost anything made by TTI is complete sh*t


Kori

Kori, of that list (forgetting of course the vacuum cleaners etc.) TTI only manufacture Homelite & Ryobi.

MTD have in the past mass badge-engineered engines supplied to them by ryobi, but are not the same company, Craftsman is a brand owned by MTD.

Woolworth (I'm assuming that's something a little different to our Woolworths supermarkets) sounds to me like some form of department store that purchases machines from companies to re label as their own instore products.

Husqvarna is in no way related to any of this, and is still a well regarded professional product.

Husqvarna is a Swedish based company that was once part of Electrolux, but split to form it's own company, they now own Poulan, Weedeater, Jonsered, McCulloch, Gardena, Flymo, and many others.

I'm not sure where you got this information, or what on earth conviced you Husqvarna should be in that list, but you might want to pay more attention in futre.

So far you've taken ill towards Both Husqvarna & Honda, both generally well regarded reliable brands used by professionals, can i ask you, if these don't satisfy you, could you enlighten us to what does?

That being said Ty, when chasing parts for a talon chainsaw and hitting the catalogues they had husqvarna written on the cover.

Yep, Talon is another one of Husqvarnas recent purchases, while talon still run there own manufacture, Husky sort of own them, and it gives them access to the talon plants to make their spares.

Husky still have their quality in check, as the parts made for husky have to pass a higher standard, however the agreement allows talon to make non-oem parts with the same equipment, not to the same quality, and not under either husky or talons names, and hence my cheep chinese replacement piston

Well done Ty to put that Kori in his place as regards who makes what these days.
It has been very interesting over the last few years to see dealers getting access to what used to be,for them, Opposition brands. This being bought about by Manufacturers being taken over by some other Compnay and a lot of Badge Engineering going on as well at the same time.
I just scrounged an empty mower box to send some parts away and its a Rover box and I see it has MTD address labels on it..It struck me as being rather odd but the I seem to recall someone telling me MTD had aqquired Rover.
. Must have a wander around the mower shops soon and see what is going on Cheers Joe

Hi Joe B, you are quite correct there mate, Rover was taken over by MTD....the Rover/MTD operation has closed down their Brisbane manufacturing plant and moved the lot to China!
Another one bites the dust!!

So its well into that time of year again, this year I managed to get a little bench sharpener from a garage sale for $5, its sort of like a compund mitre saw but tiny and has an abrasive disc.

With the proper sharpener I can get two decent sized loads of wood out of one chain rather than have to swap halfway through.

The saw itself, has been pushed very very hard this year, compression is down a bit from what I remember, but so far we have hauled in 9 loads of wood (approz 700kg a load) I gave it another proper service after 2 loads this year and noticed that I had flogged it hard enough the carbon on the piston appeared to be flaking off, there has never been a shortage of oil in the fuel but its had some decent runs at wide open throttle.

The little sharpener I got takes so little off the chain and leaves a razors edge, it needs to be shortened but will probably get another year out of the shortened chain.

I have to haul another load tomorrow and we'll see the size of what I pull in