Fairbanks Morse Recoil Starter

The FM recoil needed a rebuild because it slipped and retracted very slowly. Part of the rebuild was to strip the paint and get it down to bare metal like I suspect it is in the factory photo. I thought there would be gold paint underneath but the entire engine has no paint under the yellow except the carb which is Hunter green. Since I want to use the FM to start the bike I decided to look in my box of FM goodies to see what was there. I quickly found an unpainted FM housing that came from my 82006 powered chainsaw which spins the wrong way. FM recoils are built to be reversible so I used that. 82001 recoil at top, 82006 recoil bottom left and 58011 recoil bottom right. I used parts from all 3 recoils.

All 3 of these recoils had the old style friction washers with round bores. I swapped the old friction washers out for the newer more positive style with 2 flats in the bore. I also put a new 2 stroke rated starter rope on the recoil.

I knew there was a notched FM cup on a 58011 engine that was laying around somewhere. I was always curious to try that to see if it was more positive then the smooth bore cup. ( I hate FM recoils FYI)

I used a new nut and tightened it up with my impact wrench. They are supposed to be torqued to 35 foot pounds.

I used flat head bolts to center up the recoil starter since the FMs do not self center and many times drag on one side. I also used the handle from the 58011 FM starter since it is wide enough to get 4 fingers on not 2 like the original. (My right hand middle finger pops out of joint real easy.) I prefer the mitten handle yankers but that would not look correct.

I replaced the flat heads one at a time with the correct Pan head screws.