Repair-It

This has been a very good unit overall, a handheld blower. Bought around 2008. It is a Craftsman Professional, which is a direct Husqvarna rebadge. It even tolerated a portion of a tank of straight gas (Ian). I use it mainly for blowing off the driveway, walkway, stairs and porch. Also the deck and sometimes the gutters. And the lawn tractor after I mow.

I had some running trouble a year or two back and was able to tweak the supposedly non-adjustable mixture screws and got it running well again.

But lately I've been having starting trouble. Some diagnostics lead me to suspect it actually has two issues:
1) The primer bulb doesn't seem to work right and there is air in the lines even as I continually prime.
2) The ignition seems either intermittent or weak as starting fluid doesn't work when I am having trouble getting it to even fire

So I ordered a new primer bulb and ignition coil. I got OEM Husqvarna for both at $37 total. I replaced the coil and primer but left the 10 year old plug just to test. It actually looked decent still. Anyway it started and ran well but I decided to replace the plug anyway. I got an NGK for the plug. The OEM was Champion.

Anyway it seems all fixed now. I will monitor the next few uses to make sure it is back to 100% but so far so good.

Just did a cold start on it. It seems to require one more pull than when it was new, which is quite impressive for a 10 year old 2-stroke machine such as this. But yeah, it started and ran great.

Another cold start. Actually started faster this time. None of the issues I had before are present. It really seems fixed.

Wasn't running at full speed due to rich mixture, and occasionally smoking. I got sick of fiddling (or trying to fiddle, because they are not philips or flat) with the mixture screws so I bought this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/174037103338

Only needed the 21 spline one but this worked perfectly. I was able to adjust the H and L screws to my heart's desire. The high speed screw just needed to be turned in a tiny bit and the RPMs picked right up to full speed. Fixed! Can't tell you how many hours I've spent combined trying to tweak these with various methods....wow. $8 well spent.

kevm14 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 12:26 pm This has been a very good unit overall, a handheld blower. Bought around 2008. It is a Craftsman Professional, which is a direct Husqvarna rebadge. It even tolerated a portion of a tank of straight gas (Ian).

RIP, 2008-2022. Engine locked up. I blew the entire driveway, shut it down. Rinsed massive pollen off S550 and started it to dry the big drops off the car. Didn't get too far and it started screaming and RPM dropped. Eventually it died but sounded like it spun a bearing. Restarted it once or twice and now it won't pull over at all. Nice. Well, time for a big nasty professional backpack one.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Husqvarna-570B ... 1000760830

I still think it should have lasted a lot longer and I do blame Ian for that tank of straight gas I accidently ran many years ago. I think that took life off the bearings or whatever.

I was able to pull it over this morning (with a lot of force and a terrible metal on metal sound). I will dump a little MMO into the cylinder, let it soak, and roll it over again. If it's piston maybe it will function again. If it's rod bearing, I'm obviously hosed. And even if it's the piston I am sure the cylinder is pretty scuffed at this point.

Opened the vacuum grill to help rotate the engine over and it definitely has a nasty stuck spot. It's metal on metal. No matter what I did I couldn't get it to pull over. It would just bind up. So I put it away thinking that was that.

I was watching TV later this evening and I just had this premonition that maybe the coil had somehow come loose and was rubbing on the flywheel. Easy enough to check.

Went outside and pulled the recoil starter off. Immediately noticed metal shavings inside the flywheel area. Good sign?
Closer inspection of the flywheel revealed some significant signs of abrasion/rubbing on something.
I removed the coil and that definitely was not the issue but at least I can take credit for "flywheel issue." But how was it rubbing on this shield? Maybe the crank actually walked somehow. So I guess I couldn't rule out internal engine damage yet. Had to remove flywheel next.

Wow check out this scraping.
I wiggled the shield and realized that it's screwed into the engine block. And the screws did not look tight. Actually it looks like there were as many as five screws and TWO were missing and the remaining three were all loose, one very loose.
Come to think of it, a month ago I did report that there was some kind of rattle that had been going on for a long time and it finally just stopped one day. Well it may have chewed up two screws!! Crazy. Well, time to loctite the remaining three and reassemble.
Next I screwed the flywheel back on. Then the coil and set the gap. The rest of the covers and recoil starter. I did try rotating the engine and it rotated perfectly smoothly. Wow. Good shot here for sure.

It fired right up though the exhaust was full of MMO from my repeated cylinder soakings. Eventually the smoke completely cleared. It hasn't run this nice/smooth in a long time. I think the loose shield was vibrating and maybe the dragging on the flywheel was pulling a little power from the engine. How about that? Good use of my forum and I saved myself $500+.

Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke I started it this morning and everything is still normal.

Used it again, hot starts and everything. I tweaked the high and low speed mixture for the hell of it (because I can) and it is still running really well. I do still wish for a more efficient way at clearing the part of my driveway across from my garage but aside from that I really can't complain. It's really not worth $500 for that extra convenience...

I could get a more reasonable ~$300 backpack model but I don't think it will add a ton of airflow, just mainly more comfort.

Happened again. This time just one screw but it backed into the flywheel and almost stopped the engine. Fortunately I knew what to do. So I removed the bolt, cleaned it and the hole, and installed it with blue Loctite. I need to order 5 new bolts because there is oil leaking probably because these bolts hold the crankcase together? Anyway apparently it needs all 5. Imagine that.