This is on my agenda for this weekend to work on. Hope somethin works, my fence rows are lookin like jungle fever has set in. Thanks for all the replies.

 

Pull off the muffler and make sure the exhaust valve is free of restriction. I had an Echo weed eater that was doing the same thing. I tore the carb apart and cleaned it, checked the spark arrester, and nothing helped. I finally took the muffler off for some reason and found a chunk of carbon clogging 90% of the valve. Cleaned it out and she ran like a new one.

 

Babyfat is a STIHL dealer

 

Pulled it apart again today. Didn't find the screen for the spark arrestor, pulled the muffler and all looked good under there. Piston move free and looks clean. Drained the fuel and refilled with fresh. The one thing I think I did find was that the plug wire was pulled lose out of the boot. Don;t know how long that been like that, before or after I was workin with it last. Got it put back together but the rain stopped the project so still don't know if that fixed anything. Need to see if it has spark yet.

 

Got it runnin finally. Don't know which thing did it but it's runnin. Got the plug wire all put back together, cleaned up the points on the flywheel and cleaned all the old fuel out of the cylinder with an air hose. It's still cold blooded as hell tryin to start it for the first time each day but once it's warm it fires up on the first pull every time.

Thanks to all here for the blisters on my hand from the first day of 3 hours of weed eatin. Talk about mixed blessings.

 

Nice!
Man I hate those weed eaters for that reason. They're such a pain in the *** when they don't run right, and it can take forever to fix what's supposed to be a simple 2-stroke engine. For being so simple they sure are finnicky. I can't stand them.

 

Bought a Stihl FS55R in Oct. '08. Worked great until this month and then I couldn't get gas into the primer bulb. Took it back to the dealer thinking that because it was less than a year old it would be covered by warranty. Mistake. Stihl doesn't warrant any gas operated equipment if gas is used in the equipment, because they don't know if "dirty" gas was used. I estimate that the annual costs for maintence to rebuild the carburetor every 8 months to be $172.00/year. It's cheaper to buy a Ryobi at half the price and throw it out when it stops working and buy a new one. Cost for A Ryobi weedeater/year $168.00; costs for a Stihl weedeater/year $300.00 plus rebuilding the carburetor one time, $86.55 for a total of $386.55. pus $86.55 every 6-8 months to rebuild the carburetor on the Stihl.

 

No offense intended in any way, but instead of paying some random person that assembled an engine in front of a company rep to be certified. Why not buy a carb kit and rebuild it yourself for a quarter the cost, if not less then what a warranty service center will normally charge you to do it? I rebuild two strokes for all kinds of chainsaws locally and most of the time its not even a bad carb, they usually just need new filters and good cleaning internally.

 

i have been fighting the same problem this year. All my problems have been do to the ethonal fuel. the ethonal fuel will gum up and become sticky and plug the very small ports in the carb. i have got good at these carbs

 

Damn is that the problem I'm havin now. Got this thing runnin great for about 4 or 5 hours of run time and now it won't run right again. I have to start it with the trigger pulled and keep it pulled the whole time, as soon as I let off it dies's.