Stihl Zama Carburetors

[StarTech]

Head ups guys. Stihl has now propriety the parts for the Zama carburetors so we now must buy the parts though them thru our local dealers at inflated prices. Its corporate greed in action just trying to force the owners to deal with them only.

The RB155 I am needing is $18 from Stihl and I can get a Hipa version for $7 ea with shipping. BTW the GND kit is GND-88.

[bgsengine]

Head ups guys. Stihl has now propriety the parts for the Zama carburetors so we now must buy the parts though them thru our local dealers at inflated prices. Its corporate greed in action just trying to force the owners to deal with them only.

The RB155 I am needing is $18 from Stihl and I can get a Hipa version for $7 ea with shipping. BTW the GND kit is GND-88.

They been proprietary for years.. Could not get new carbs from Zama distributor for those, and even some kits were unavailable, but with a little extra work, have been able to put together kits from individual zama part numbers by cross referencing the RB kit to a carb parts lookup and order individual gaskets, etc. But yeah , you may find your replacement carburetor available from Stihl (if the dealer goes by the Stihl official MSRP) for far less than a replacement OEM Zama .. Then figured out you can buy the aftermarket equivalent (HIPA usually) on alibaba or some such in quantity for like $3 bucks a pop.. Also you may not be surprised to know that there's much counterfeit Stihl (I've seen one in the shop with a "STAHL" brand that looks JUST LIKE the Stihl logo, but as I no longer do any service work on Stihl or Husqvarna at all, I don't see much of that any more either)

[RoyM]

Are you no longer doing handhelds? Stihl and Husqvarna are pretty much the only ones the the local dealer sees that are worth servicing.

[StarTech]

Personally I work on a lot handhelds but it just pisses me off when a company is charging 3x for carburetor kits that I normally get reasonable at $5-$8 each. I however don't do the curve shaft models of the trimmers as they are usually el cheapo in the first place.

Now I understand why AVB flew the coup this week and I still haven't heard from him. But he got several Stihl saws awaiting him when he get back. He said the local dealer went to $100 per hour on labor so he see a lot of the Stihls now.

[bgsengine]

Are you no longer doing handhelds? Stihl and Husqvarna are pretty much the only ones the the local dealer sees that are worth servicing.

Only taking on service work for Echo, Dolmar, Makita, Shindaiwa. Started having trouble getting parts at reasonable cost for off-brands (or in a timely fashion for that matter.. straw that broke the camel's back was a Husqvarna recoil pulley that was backordered for over 6 months, customer was bad-mouthing me about taking forever to get it fixed, all the area dealers, nobody had any in stock either)

So, Because parts can't be had at a reasonable profit margin , we no longer service those brands we can't readily get parts for... So we send em down the road , you wanna save 10 bucks by buying an equivalent Husqvarna from local dealer, instead of the Echo model we offer, you get to pay it back when you pay their $75/hour shop rate to get it fixed when it breaks down the day after warranty runs out.

(we have a FLAT rate $45 per repair ticket on our brands, whatever time it takes to fix them, and a VIP discounted rate from that when they bought their equipment from us... and simply refuse to do any other brands... the cool thing is, we rarely ever see them back except for Red Armor oil, saw chains, string, tune-up kits, etc.... 2 warranty tickets in the last year on Echo, while in that same time, turned away a couple dozen Husqvarnas that needed repairs that woulda been warranty if they were Echo... One of them came back and got a new saw after dealer wanted almost as much to fix the 13-month old Husqvarna as the price we sold him the Echo for. )