1. 0.5mm plug gap sounds small. Hope this is the OEM recommendation. - Yup, this is right out of the Sthil manual.
2. I don't see much smoke when it's running. You said you put Stihl oil in. How much oil did you dump into the gas? - 1 gallon of ethanol free fresh gas to 1 little bottle of sthil mixture.
4. You said you didn't want to put a lot of money in it until you hear it run. I've seen several videos of it running. - $100 on a carb for this old machine is a quarter of a price of a new machine. I could try putting the original back on if I can figure out how to stop it from leaking.
6. I'll fess up and tell on myself. Is there any chance you are operating the choke lever the wrong way? Yup I'm guilty...... LOL - I sure hope not. Looked right when I had the air filter cover off.
7. Does it have a strong spark? Get a spark tester and see. Or ground the plug on the block and check it that way. Make a video of your spark test. - I have a Harbor Freight spark tester that lights up but its not a very bright test kit, whenever I use it on lawnmowers and such it needs to be done in the dark, this one lights it up as well. I don't know if my camera will pick up the video in a dark garage.
8. Muffler seems wide open. Look elsewhere. - This morning I decided to have one more go at it, took off the entire muffler to see if it would run without it. It does, same issue though. Despite being loud enough to wake up the entire neighborhood when I was running it with no muffler same exact thing happened, so thats not the problem.
9. How about a vacuum leak at the carb? Most guys over torque those tiny bolts that secure the carb and warp that black block slash manifold deal. - The two tiny screws that hold the carb on?
10. Order new exhaust gaskets to replace the one that crumbled. - Can it run with no exhaust gasket at all?
11. Strip it down to verify intake and exhaust ports IN the block are clear. Might need to decarbon that little fella'. - So you're talking about taking off everything leading into the engine block and checking the other side?
The machine now starts up super easy, one of two pulls max, it's great. No matter what I do though, throttle kills it. For giggles I also took off the fuel filter (desperation) to see if maybe that was causing the engine to be starved of fuel. Same issue. I am going to put things back together and check into the carb again, the post above yours has the air test, I'll guess I will do that now, turn L all the way in and see if anything comes out the H.
I wonder if someone will buy this for $100 and I'll cut my losses.. I will try the next few suggestions today and see what happens.
It's just that the trigger kills it so quickly, it doesn't even try to rev up, there isn't even an attempt. Pulling it just shuts it off immediately.
$100 for a Sthil carb still scares me as I wont be able to get my money back on that if it doesn't work. I have used a lot of knock off carbs before and have had issues, rough idling, never really perfection, but at least enough to get the various mowers and edgers and stuff running to the point where they were functional. Having this be this bad is something new.
