OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Tech Talk Repairing MS 361 Stihl (Submerged in Flood) Part 1

So I have a Stihl MS 361 chainsaw which has been under water in the Bundaberg floods. I had it in a shipping container that got washed in to a creek. I've emptied a small amount of water from the fuel tank and washed that out with Methylated Spirits. Removed the air cleaner,spark plug and cowling and turned her upside down and about 200mm of rusty water came out while pulling on the starter cord. Where do I go from here guys. Do I strip it right down? I haven't tried to start it at all. Its only done 20hrs work and would like to get her going. Any help would be great....

You need to go through a number of steps to get it back into prime condition, Dave. Essentially, you need to get the mud out first, the water out second, and the oil in third. I suggest a pressure washer carefully applied as the first step. Don't go blowing the air cleaner to pieces, but remove the covers and wash it clean, including getting the mud out from behind the flywheel and around the crankcase seals and the clutch. Don't worry about getting water in the crankcase, you have to wash the mud out of there too. Also, the carburetor is going to have to be dried out, so take it off for separate treatment. Once everything else is clean but wet, you start the drying process. Tip the water out of everywhere you can. Don't try to spin it over at this point though, it probably won't have an oil film yet. When there is not enough water left to pour or shake out of anywhere, I personally would squirt some soluble oil in through the intake port, shake it around, and rotate the engine, which will coat everything with an emulsion of oil and water. Do the same with the chain oiling system. Then tip out what you can of the emulsion and put in some more soluble oil, and spin the engine with the starter. Repeat until the oil comes back out looking like oil, not milk. That will have removed nearly all the water, and will have left enough oil film to keep anything from scuffing, if it hasn't already scuffed. Now it is time to dry out the external parts including the ignition system. This is best done by putting the whole machine (except the carburetor) into a stream of warm air for a couple of hours. Spend that couple of hours cleaning out the carburetor, blowing compressed air through all the passages and chambers until all the water is out. Reassemble the carburetor carefully. When the rest of the saw has finished drying, work some two stroke oil through the crankcase and cylinder, and some bar oil through the chain oil pump, so the right oils will mix with the soluble oil and remove it when the oil sprays out as you spin the engine with the starter. Then oil the chainbar itself, reassemble everything, test the spark, fill with fuel and chain oil, and fire it up.

Thanks for the quick reply Grumpy. I'll go through the steps you set out over a couple of week ends. Still flat out at work due to the floods. I'm happy to see the write up I done on my old Greenfield is still helping people. I might do the same for the saw. Thanks again mate...

Dave, if you post a report something like the one you did with the Greenfield clutch repair, it will make an excellent thread that will interest a lot of people I think. Please make sure you give us plenty of good pictures, as you did with the Greenfield.

No worries Grumpy I'll get on to that today. Just got to find some where that sells soluble oil.

One of the common forms of it, is for use as lathe and milling machine cutting-tool coolant. That would be available from machinery shops, and perhaps from Repco.

The reason I proposed that you establish an oil film with soluble oil before drying the whole machine with warm air, is that (depending on the temperature of the warm air) there may be some oxidation during the drying process if you don't. If you can't get soluble oil you can shorten the whole process by drying it without an oil film, provided that you can then get the 2 stroke oil right through it (crankshaft, bore, rings and bearings in particular) without rotating the engine. A dry, washed engine with a slight oxide film on the iron bits is very likely to scuff or even stick if you rotate it.

Thanks