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To add to the other suggestions about the battery, Iāve tried the welder trick a few times with mixed results. Sometimes it can bring a completely dead battery back to life and other times it doesnāt seem to help.
I suppose it could be dangerous but the way I have done it was to open the battery and add water if needed. Then, with the caps still off, hook the welder to it making sure the polarity is right. Turn the welder on and watch the bubbling. Donāt leave it hooked up very long to avoid getting it too hot. A minute or maybe 5 minutes at a time then leave it cool down. Repeat it a few times and hopefully each cell will be bubbling about the same.
Then, like Cody said, put it on the charger for a day and see if it improves. If the charger doesnāt recognize it and wonāt even start to charge it, you could try hooking another battery in parallel with it to get the charger turned on.
I figured it was worth trying to get the battery charged instead of just trading it in on a new one. If it doesnāt help (or isnāt strong enough), itās still worth the same as the exchange on a new one.
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The 100 dollar coil from Stihl is why I went with the battery electric saw. The saw only is 180 bucks. I can throw it out and be right about the same cost as a coil replacement after the 60-80 dollar bench fee. Mine is the 80v greenworks 18" bar but I got the package on a prime day deal with the smallest 2ah battery for like 225. The battery doesnāt last very long, but it cuts fairly well. Their equivalency isnāt off. I actually like it. I can use it without screwing around trying to get it to start, and donāt smell like 2 cycle and it is quiet so neighbors donāt poke their heads around.
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Hi Sean. Yea - I have a Stihl with a bad coil. I forget for sure - I think it is an 041av electronic if I recall correctly. I suspect the coils are intentionally high priced to drive the purchase of new saws rather than repair old saws.
Iāve had a number of electric saws. No cordless - yet. The first one I bought some 20 years ago actually had a simple brass bodied plunger type auto oiler. It was a decent saw - as far as it seems most electrics are made. I canāt recall who made it. I remember it was light grey in color with orange accents. I googled vintage electric chain saw and scrolled through the images. I didnāt see it. Sadly it had some issues after a couple years and ended up on the shelf. It became food for the fire.
(Iām editing this. Iām took me a while to remember thingsā¦age. Sometimes a blessing but often comes with issues. I just recalled that my first saw was a Remington. But a grey and orange version. Not the later black version with the rubber bulb in the oil cap to displace the oil out of the tank. The earlier version used the same plastic drive sprocket as at least some of the later black series. The drive sprocket as a molded cam in it that operated the plunger type oiler found in the early version,}
Sadly the newer black Remington electrics are what folks often get introduced to and they are so poorly made as to be an insult to the Remington name. One of those will turn folks away from electric saws when they strip the plastic drive gear and find that putting it away with oil in the tank will result in the oil getting pumped out by daily temperature changes.
I actually toyed with the idea of making an electric saw with a worm drive so that the motor could be more in line with the blade for balance. But - I donāt need an additional project anymore.
As battery powered tools are becoming more popular, technology is driving making better quality tools. A friend saw me using a 18v Ryobi disk grinder and was impressed. Then I had to tell him that the battery pack died the following day. Apparently it overheated in use. I now see a company is offering 6AH batteries for the Ryobi One system. Iām suspecting Iām going to buy one or 2 for myself.
Heck, you can buy a snow blower now that uses removable batteries. I have a 110v Toro snowblower that works nice for the area I need to do. Always starts. Lots quieter. Lighter in weight. No fuel. No mixing fuel. Doesnāt throw as far as a gas unit but Iām OK with that. It throws snow farther than Iād want to do by hand. Using a power tool with a cord is a bit of a painā¦Takes some planning.
Does your saw have an oiler?
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Hi Steve,
The friend who gave me the Echo CS-430 had talked me into buying a home made forklift (doodlebug) back in July. It had been built from a 1957 Ford Dump truck. Itās ended up being a project of taking care of some rather large problems. On Wednesday it broke a bracket for the hydraulic tilt cylinder. Iād sent him some photos of the āweldā that broke. My friend stopped by yesterday. He wanted to see how well the Yes welder worked.
He has a shop but like me - knows that there might be something better out there than what you have. I definitely went down in cost to replace the Thermalarc inverter welders and the Hobart 130 MIG welder that I lost in the fire - along with $1M in other machinery and building. Iād used the inverter welders to power a suitcase feeder for welding 16g steel fume hoods and fire proof ducts. They were the wrong power source for MIG so making welds was very fussy but being able to use the high frequency current get nice welds using less current was very beneficial to ward off warping of the components I was making. I knew from my experience that I wanted an inverter MIG / FCAW welder. I donāt do much TIG but it had a high enough switching speed to operate as TIG and also good old SMAW. I figured I could try it and if I didnāt like it - sell it - loose a bit of money and watch for a more costly machine. If it failed in a few years I can buy several more before having spent the same amount of money for just one of the more costly āname brandā machines.
I donāt have mains power at the shop anymore due to the fire so was using a 3500 watt 110v generator that my friend also gave me several months ago. He was impressed. Not just that I could weld using the generator but that I was obtaining so much heat from a 110v machine. Nothing like a transformer machine and only obtaining 90 amps. The welder digital display indicates a maximum of 165amps on 110v. That requires 43 amps. I donāt know what voltage and current the generator was actually supplying but the results welding 1/4" steel plate to 1/4"
truck frame were decent for flux core. The 1/2" thick bracket to 1/4" crossmember was not as pretty. I donāt like flux core. I tried running welds last year using flux core and shielding gas. OH BOY! That was hot! I needed to really try different settings for that but didnāt have time.
This is what the prior owner did for welds. I wonder if he forgot to weld this side.
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I think i would put a 1/2" ratchet with a pipe on the end of the crank shaft bolt -to see if it if stuck first- maybe the starter is broke.? The welder sounds impressive. I was thinking of buying the 220 or 250 amp eastwood mig welder,But the one yes welder you bought donāt sound too bad.
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Because of the 2000 W inverter generator I still use a lot of corded tools. Throw the Gen and tools on the truck or in a wagon and get busy. I have a lot of battery tools, mostly Milwaukee and mostly 12v but If Iām framing or doing a lot of cutting I like corded Circular and recip saws. I have had garbage cans full of 18 and 20V battery tools. Some in there because the manufacturer obsoleted the way the batteries plug in and some, Like the Chicago Electric because they just dropped the line and didnāt make the batteries any longer. My Echo battery saw cost me 50 bucks less than my 60cc Echo gas saw. The battery saw has itās uses but it doesnāt drop or buck a two foot Dia tree that the gas saws go through like butter.
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I agree TomH.
Matches my life-use experiences too.
Way back when I wore a much younger mans clothes I worked the the mid-counties cow dairies. On one for in-barns we used an all metal plug-in Milwaukee chainsaw for needful things like plunge cutting in new doorways and notch cutting old beams. On the spot cut-and fits. Edges evening up.
Or hand saws. Framers hatchets.
On another dairy it was an all metal Wen brand plug-in electric chainsaw.
Fire up a gasoline 2-stroke screamer was a noticeable drop in that days milk production. Never ever do anything that affect the bottom line $$$-making results in a negative way.
And over the decades 2-strokes did get smaller and lighter. Work less smoky.
Still cannot be beat for outside, out and about, working.
The battery electrics have also gotten better and better.
Still . . . . first the ārange anxietyā. Learning the hard way to $$$ obtain, and carry more extra batteries than you could possibly need for the job.
And on the wonderful infinitely variable speed and torque of cordless drills experiences the later harsh lesson of batteries use/age wearing out. THEN no longer available new.
NOT a mature technology, until the power fuel source becomes standardized and universal interchangeable.
Like Grid power had to become.
Like gasoline had to became.
Steve Unruh.
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I borrowed a corded snowblower and chewed threw the cord once. LOL 
Always put a cheap short cord on the end, and plan like you wonāt be able to see the cord under the snow. Otherwise it worked well and actually better in slush.
My saw has an auto-oiler, but I donāt think it is adjustable. It is fairly bare-bones, cheaply made compared to like stihl.
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If you need to reach me my phone # is still 517 852-1900
Reminds me of the Makita 12v hammer drill I bought 20 some years ago. An impressive tool that was more powerful than the gearcase could handle. But then the battery got tired. I ended up making a corded tool out of it so I could power it from a vehicle.
Powering any corded tool from an inverter always makes me nervous. I wonder how robust the inverter generators are. Iāve had several inverters burn out. Even when operated well below their rated continuous output. One - a 3000 watt unit burned out all of the switching transistors and capacitors with copious amounts of the stinky mystical smoke when I unplugged the electric lawn mower I had been gently using. Yea- when I was unplugging the mower. Lost 2 so far powering computer power supplies.
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I think the rule of thumb when it comes to nearly all Chinese inverters is what ever it says on the box expect it to maybe run half that amount and duty cycle will also be limited , lost count of the amount of cheap inverters i have wasted since i started playing , there are a few that are still going strong but its very hit and miss , the Australian inverters are maybe 10 times the cost but they are forever machines and out of my reach , still trying to grab a second hand Victron ,but even they are maybe 6 times the cost of a Chinese inverter .
Dave
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Dave, thatās good to know about Chinese inverters. I was considering buying one and knew they werenāt the best, but I thought they would be better. Which brands do you have that are still going strong?
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A large number of transistors/mosfets I have seen individually for motor controls boards, have much higher ratings, then what they can achieve without additional cooling. You need to add heatsinks or fans to get the achieve the full rating from the chips.
Therefore, if you go with a cheap inverter add a fan, a heatsink or both. Chances are high they skimped there on the inverters as well.
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The one that failed on us the past August was a Samlex Power 600w full sine wave.
It was installed in our motorhome. Prior owner - an electrical engineer - used it to power a small dorm sized refrigerator. We took out the added refrigerator and were just using the inverter to power a laptop computer. No warning but it simply quit working.
I installed a 2000 watt modified sine wave. Weāll see how log it lasts.
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Wow. There used t be a pile like that at a local mill. They burned it.
I thought I could make use of the low cost fuel and build a chipper for it so that it could be fed into a furnace using a stoker. Alas, the screw chipper didnāt work well. Well - it worked - I simply didnāt have power to run it. Life - and a fire - got in the way of trying to make knives to convert a 24" metal shaper into a chipper to see how well it worked for making chips
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Is this what you mean by metal shaper?
How was that going to make wood chips from slabs?
I can imagine how it could work but not sure how fast it would āchipā a slab (or stack of slabs).
Doesnāt really matter since I no longer have a metal shaper but Iām curious how you planned to do it.
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Yes, I had a wood splitter mounted on one - using the shaper head in place of the hydraulic ram. I was going to see if it had sufficient power to shear the wood across the grain. If it did then possibly additional knives could be fitted that would split the pieces with the grain - making cubical chunks.
The fire put a stop to my work and the shaper sat outside. I needed to clean up and out of frustration scrapped the shaper. I still have a 24" G&E in the old shop that could be used. But at this point am preparing to scrap the yard and likely sell the plant. This would likely put an end to my having a shop.
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I also had slat top chain type conveyor chain that I was going to use as a power feed for transporting the slabs into the chipper. The slat top chain could allow the slabs to advance against a length stop and then the wood slab could slide on the flat slats as the conveyor continued to run - eliminating the need for a start/stop mechanism for the conveyor.
A 24" Cincinnati shaper often has a high speed setting of up to about 100 strokes per minute. I had figured that at high speed the mass of the ram would perform much of the cutting force rather than relying on the strength of the drive mechanism to provide all of the force required. I do not know how fast the wood would accelerate to be advanced by the feed conveyor for each cut. This would determine the stroke rate and thus production rate. In a perfect situation this could be a a 10ft slab of wood per minute.
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Some time ago, there was some talk about the exhaust systems of chainsaws, they are factory-made in different designs, well, they cause a big drop in power. With the old Echo saw, I tried to change the exhaust system a bit, the idea is that I donāt want to lose the combustible mixture during the exhaust stroke through the exhaust opening, which then mixes with the exhaust gases, but to keep it separately in the exhaust channel pipe, which the return blow of the exhaust would gases returned to the cylinder, here is a sketch. I also did a similar intervention with the Solo saw.
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