# Poulan PL25 Weed Eater



## TangoBravo (Jun 19, 2015)

Hello everyone. Though I've been reading the forum for quite a while I finally had to become a member because I'm bamboozled and flummoxed on a Poulan PL25 weed eater. #1 - I'm not a mechanic but know the basics (air, gas, spark, compression). #2 - I know Poulan's don't have the best rep on this site and many of you think I should toss it, but it's become personal to me now and want to see it through to the end. Here's what I've done thus far:
New fuel filter, new gas lines, new carburetor and gaskets, new spark plug (gapped properly). new piston ring. Saw a thread on this site about muffler cloggage so took it off and cleaned the screen.

It doesn't even try to fire. Plenty of spark jump from the plug. The piston had some mild scoring but still seemed in decent shape after scraping all the silver gunk (almost like soot) off of it. I'm using Stihl motomix (no ethanol 92 octane). 

I have a running PL25 and have swapped the carburetor and plug to the non-running one but still no luck.

When I put the new piston ring on it was a nice tight fit back into the cylinder (is that the right name???).

So here I sit at a loss but don't want to give up. I think it pulls too easy like I'm losing compression. I have ryobis, stihls and other poulan's that seem to pull just a tad harder than this one.

Bought a cheap compression tester. After doing a complete clean of the piston I was only getting about 50 psi (the other PL25 was at 95) but my son who's an auto mechanic said I need to put one or two drops of oil in the spark plug hole because I was cranking it in a dry state. So I did that and the compression jumped to 110 on the tester.

Any help will be appreciated!!! (PS. I can tear the whole thing apart now in under 10 minutes so if anyone wants to see a picture of something, I'll take one and post it.) Thanks in advance.


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## geogrubb (Jul 28, 2006)

You need at least 100psi for 2-cycle weedeater type engines to run, you can beat yourself getting them to start and then they die. Don't waste money on low end 2-cycles repair the cylinder is not made for repair of the unit. Have a good one. Geo


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## jerrymc39 (Nov 12, 2014)

You may want to check the flywheel key. I had the same situation occur and it ended up being a sheared flywheel key.


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## ron350 (Jul 18, 2015)

TangoBravo did you ever get it cranked?


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