Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

One guy from MSP area is selling his 15 year old HS621 (the guy from Wayzata MN who hates HomeDepot and GC engines) for $450.  Another one is selling his one year old HS520 for $400 with one year remaining on the warranty.  HS621 is a nice machine but is it really worth more than nearly new HS520?  Replacement parts for HS520 is about 50% of the cost of HS621. What do I recommend for a friend?  I think the HS621 from that guy is simply way too high (if it were as good as aa335 then it is a different story).  HS520 seems like an economical option.  What do you guys think?

Thanks a lot, aa335. I guess I WILL try to clean up the carb I have. But was tempted to just slap on a knockoff carb after reading somewhere here on Abbysguide about a guy who had trouble cleaning his HS621 carb, then found a $12 knockoff carb which worked great. Here's my plan. (Never messed with a carb before so could be interesting.) Will drain the fuel, then will tip machine forward, leaning up onto its chute to see if I can wrench out the carb from the bottom (not real confident about making this step work). If that works, I'll go at things with some Gumout, poking a thin wire through various carb passages if possible, then slap it all back together and hope to run without choke full on. If that doesn't improve things, I might try higher octane fuel. Might be back on here in a day or so asking where to buy new carb gaskets. If still running on full choke, I might ask for any direct pointer to a decent priced knockoff carb. Don't really feel like spending the $62 for OEM if an approx. $12 knockoff will get me running strong. Thanks again, aa35!

For what it's worth, I doubt that high-octane gas would make any kind of meaningful difference.

Also, for carb gaskets, I bought a rebuild kit for my weedwhacker over the summer. I was a bit surprised when it did not include a new gasket for between the carb and the engine. That one had ripped during disassembly, too. It was a thick-paper type of gasket. So I took it to an auto parts store and bought a roll of the same type of gasket material, for about $5. I traced out the old gasket and cut a replacement out of the new roll, it worked great.

I did the same thing recently for the carb on another engine, using the same roll of material. No problems. You can probably buy the exact replacement gasket you need, but if you don't want to wait, or to pay that much, you can probably make your own.

Great tip, RedOctobyr! If mine rips, I'll head to Ralph's for some gasket material.