A few weeks ago I had the unfortunate job of climbing up on the roof of my parent’s shed to cut down dead limbs (trees) with their Remington Pole Saw. Everything was going great until I lost my balance, almost fell off the roof, and the pole saw slammed down (upside-down) right on the bar and chain oil cap. Put a big crack in it and it wouldn’t tighten without popping off.
Bar and chain oil isn’t oil for the engine. It’s oil that lubricates the cutting chain and the channel that the chain sits in. It’s very important, and not having a cap for the oil reservoir is bad news.
Yes I can order a new one online from an OEM parts place but it’s $4 for the cap and $8 for shipping. If you know me and Marty, there ain’t no way we’re buying some little part and paying TWICE AS MUCH as the part for shipping when there’s probably some way we can make our own. So for now I have to try and fix it the dadand way.
Here was my temp fix for the rest of the tree-cutting duties that day.
Yep, duct tape.
My next attempt was with straight up J-B Weld cold weld compound. I took the broken cap, surrounded it with the J-B Weld and let it cure. Problem is that it was too rigid and when I tried to screw the repaired cap back on it immediately cracked.
That $8 shipping is looming.
I was poking around my workbench and I found another J-B Weld product that I had lying around… J-B Weld KwikPlastik. This is more like it. It turns into plastic, err, I mean plastik. A much better match for my plastic cap than “metal” from the original J-B Weld cold weld compound.
This product is super simple to use so I’ll go over it really fast. You cut off a chunk the size you need. Knead it until it’s an off-white color and the two parts of the epoxy are well mixed together. That’s it, but you gotta work fast. It sets up in like 20 minutes so you can’t futz with it endlessly.
Before I got into all that I made wiped off the filler neck but left a little oil on it like buttering a cookie sheet. I wanted the KwikPlastik to mold around it and harden, but I didn’t want it to fuse to the filler neck so I could unscrew it like the original cap so I could actually refill the reservoir. That’s the point of this fix after all.
DRUMROLL.
This is the totally UGLY but completely functional cap.
So far so good on this cap. If this one breaks I might try my all-time favorite product, sugru, but geez, I have to measure the time I’ve invested in this stupid cap in order to save $12, know what I mean? Me and Marty are stubborn, but we’re not as dumb as you look.