Husqvarna 51 Transplant

A couple of months ago, I was summoned by a relative to remove a 50' pine tree that was mostly in a her neighbor's yard. With a nice new chain, I started hacking. Saw was running good but smoking more than normal. Then it stopped running cause it didn't have one of the three ingredients for combustion - compression. Seems I "straight-gassed" it. Weeks prior to this, I was making mix and had no oil. Then when it was time to gas up the saw, I forgot that little fact and filled her right up!

The original saw how it looked in 2003. It pretty much looked like this when I ruined it. I figured I'd throw it away cause if I sold it on ebay, it would end up costing me more somehow.

The results of straight-gassing. See all the score marks on the front of the little round thing? (Click on the image if you can't see it very well.) That's the piston that's all goofed up. The little metal ring on the top is the ring. Its not supposed to be welded into the groove. You can see the open transfer ports in the cylinder further to the right.

This is the top of the case which, in fact, is a magnesium case. That's why I rebuilt it since lots of new, cheap saws have plastic cases. The connecting rod and bearings were all in pretty good shape.

There is the new Chinese piston on the rod. I had to grind off a bit of the wrist pin castings since the connecting rod would not fit all the way up. I used the old circlips cause I heard the chinese clips are worse than the internal castings.

Now it has the cylinder installed on the case and the muffler installed on the cylinder. I'm amazed how those chainsaw engineers pack all the peripherals into such a compact package. Note the Decompression Valve. Since this was a cylinder for a Husqvarna 55 (instead of a 51), I figured I'd need one of these. So I got one at Chainsawr. I reused my old intake boot cause it was in good shape. I'm also using the Chinese spark plug.

The carb is on along with the nice new intake manifold gasket. All the linkages went right back together. You can see the model number for the spark plug - CJ stands for Chinese Junk.

All bolted back together. I have the bar on right side up this time. Other than the old gaskets, I didn't have any extra parts - always a good sign! Gassed it up, this time with oil in the mix. It took a few pulls (like it always has), but then sputtered to life. Adjusted the idle and went out and cut some wood. It worked fantastic. Being so proud of myself in completing the transplant, I decided I could sharpen the blade with a file, like all my other chainsaw sporting buddies. Then it had a dull blade. Other than that, it works great!!

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