So I've recently moved to the bush, which (down here anyway) requires having a chainsaw. I bought the best one I could find, that was big enough to cut through all the big logs that exist on my property. All good I thought. This chainsaw is the top brand in Australia, I'm sure you know which one I mean.

It starts first time, every time, as you'd expect. A brilliant machine. I've only had one tree fall on the house so far, and it didn't do much damage so it's all good.

Fast forward to last sunday, where it just wouldn't start. I tried pulling the cover off, cleaning the air filter, pulling the spark plug, seeing if there was spark (which there was), blowing down the spark plug hole, pulling the rope with the spark plug out, putting it all back together, changing the fuel for stuff that was at most a month old, the works.

Still no kick.

The next thing I know, I'm down at the local chainsaw place getting them to have a look at it.

And you know what they told me? It was flooded. Fricken FLOODED! At least the repair was free.


So this is a public service announcement for everyone who will, at some stage, come across a 2 stroke engine that's flooded. The magic trick apparently is to pull the spark plug, turn the whole machine upside down, pull the cord a couple of times, then put the whole thing back together. Two strokes have a pool of fuel around the crankshaft (hence the oil you put into the fuel) and when you turn it upside down and pull the cord it lets that fuel out. Hence clearing the flood.


I'm sure that everyone else in the whole world knows this, except for me. Well just on the off chance that there's another numpty in here that doesn't know how to start a flooded two stroke, that's how you do it.