Ask The Editors: It’s a Spring Thing
Are ALL of these things essential?
Well the good news is the compression spring shouldn’t affect the engine aspect of starting the machine so much as trying to go without it will likely result in insufficient tension against the ratchet plate. In short this could result in some things that will make the process rougher on you: such as the rope slipping when pulled or it failing to retract sufficiently.
While it’s a relatively cheap fix, we’re guessing the reason you decided to forego it was inability to find it in stock? Fortunately this isn’t one of those situations where you need an OEM replacement part to duplicate the functionality. While reassembling the recoil, take a rough measurement of the space left where #8 in the following schematic would be, then head to your local hardware store. Any spring of reasonable dimension to put tension on the plate will work just fine.
