The day I realized chainsaws are just angry snowmobiles with teeth

I was reading the owner's manual for my old 1998 Polaris 500 while waiting for a buddy to show up for a ride, and it hit me that the whole two-stroke engine design is basically identical to the one in my Stihl chainsaw, which I never put together before - has anyone else noticed how much crossover there is between snowmobile parts and small engine equipment?

2 comments

2 Comments

margaretf401d ago

Buddy of mine runs a small engine repair shop. He had a customer come in with a snowmobile that just died on the trail. Tore it apart, found the carburetor was gummed up. Same exact issue he sees all the time on chainsaws and leaf blowers. Fixed it with parts from a generic small engine kit. Customer was real confused when he saw the box for a weed whacker carb on his sled. Guy just laughed and said it runs better than it did new. Funny how much these machines share the same guts.

river_hart181d ago

That weed whacker carb on a sled thing doesn't surprise me one bit. I had an old generator that just would not stay running right, no matter how much I cleaned the factory carb. Buddy of mine who works on small engines told me to try a carb off a cheap leaf blower. I thought he was kidding but I figured what the heck. Bolted it on with a little bracket I made, and that thing started on the first pull and hasn't given me a lick of trouble since. Sometimes the generic stuff just works better than the original design.