Echo Recoil Starter and Pull Cord

Pull the starter grip and watch what happens. If the cord is simply missing or frayed through but the pulley still spins and returns when you turn it by hand, the housing is fine and only the rope needs replacing - a five-minute job with a length of 3 mm diameter starter cord, sold in 5 ft and 10 ft lengths that cover the whole Echo two-stroke range. If instead the grip pulls with no resistance at all, or does not recoil back in, the spring or the ratchet pawls inside the housing have failed, and a cord alone will not fix it - that needs the full recoil starter assembly.

The spring inside a recoil housing is wound under real tension. Do not open the housing to inspect it without controlling the spring first; it can uncoil violently enough to cause a genuine injury. If you are not confident doing that safely, a replacement assembly that bolts on as a unit is the lower-risk repair either way.

Recoil starters bolt to the specific shape of the engine shroud, so the assembly is a model-family part, not a one-size-fits-all component. Buying by engine size instead of by model name is the most common way to order the wrong one:

The trimmer and blower assemblies above are not interchangeable with each other even where the engines are a similar size, because the housing that bolts to the shroud is shaped differently. Match the part to your specific model name, not the displacement class - the same rule that decides carburettor fitment across the range applies here too.

Echo's homeowner chainsaws add a fourth family on top of the three above: the CS-370, CS-400, CS-400F and CS-420ES share their own recoil assembly, A051000982 (replacing the earlier A051000981 / A051000980) - covered with the rest of that saw's parts on the CS-400 chainsaw parts page.

The same model-specific rule catches people on Echo's bigger hedge trimmers too. The HC-2020 takes its own recoil starter, A051003390 - a different number from the A051002791 used on the larger HC-2420, HC-3020, HCS-3020 and HCS-4020, even though all five share the same carburetor.

Restringing a recoil is fiddly the first time and quick after that. The rope needs to seat fully in the pulley groove and the knot at the grip end needs to sit flush, or it will jam on the return stroke rather than wind in cleanly. Feed the new cord through the housing and grip with the pulley pre-loaded by a turn or two of spring tension - most manuals call for two to three turns before tying off - so the grip sits snug against the housing rather than dangling loose when the engine is at rest. A grip that sits loose after a cord change usually means the pulley was not pre-tensioned enough, not that the rope is the wrong length.

A recoil fault and an engine fault look similar from the outside but are not related. If the cord pulls, the engine turns over, and it still will not catch, the starter is doing its job and the problem is fuel, filter, spark or carburettor - work through those in order on the Echo won't start page rather than touching the recoil housing. The starter is only the suspect when the pull itself feels wrong: no resistance, no return, or a rope that will not come out at all. Stale fuel and a blocked filter cause far more no-starts than a bad recoil ever does, so rule those out first with a fresh 50:1 mix from the 2-stroke oil page before assuming the starter needs work.