Spend the money & buy a better saw.

“Spend the money and buy a better saw.”

Written on: 11/03/2013

I bought this 18" 42cc 2-Cycle saw with the SimPul feature in Aug 2007. I have had 2 main problems, first with the SimPul and hard starting. They came up with the SimPul to make it easier to crank. But this design is severely flawed. It contains an additional spring which gets distorted, causing the cord not to rewind. I took it back while still under warranty and Sears fixed it free. But the same thing happened again out of warranty. So I took it apart and studied it, compared it to another saw as to how the pull cord mechanism is supposed to work, and then solved this problem permanently with a tube of 2 part Epoxy from WalMart for $3.00. The other problem is that this saw has been always hard to start, even folowing the starting procedure to the letter. Sometimes you just get worn out just to get it started. Once it starts and runs I try to get all cutting completed because restarting the warm saw is challenging. My buddy has an Echo from HomeDepot which starts very easily when hot on the first pull. If I were to do it all over again I would spend the money and get a Stihl.