First off, HUGE thanks to Dan @paragonbuilder for being the trigger man on this job. He ran every saw smooth and consistent... (and when I ran the same saw, I was 30% SLOWER)
2ndly, big thanks to Cutting Edge in NY State for hosting the GTG where I ran this comparison.
For a while I have been told that oem cylinders are the best....period....for the husqvarna 350,346xp and the like. Also, the 346xp oem 44.3 cylinder trounces all. But what about all the AM cylinders? Even if they aren't great to start with, can they be made to be AS GOOD as the oem? or better? or is there no hope for the AM stuff? ..... ESPECIALLY NOW with the oem cylinders so relatively cheap.
So....
I personally have 2 husky 350s. One is an oem 45mm cylinder saw that I ported and muffler modded. It no longer has the dished piston. It runs well, but not as well as my other 350 that has a 45mm AM cylinder....the now famous hyway saw that I ran at the November GTG here in CT.
My process has been, #1, optimize the squish while retaining a gasket by milling the bearing cup/riser appropriately. aim for .020 squish. oddly enough my hyway saw ranges from 024-028 depending on where its measured. I do not cut squish band....
#2, grind the transfers to 124 or so ...I now have a piece of card stock that I can use that tells me where to put the transfers so they are consistent throughout the saws.
#3, exhaust at 105, intake around 78. slight widening and squaring. I don't go crazy.
#4, open the muffler under the screen, again, I don't hog the thing out completely, but it gets a considerable size opening when I do this.
#5, the riser gets ground, mostly for smoothness.
everything gets put together w/ gaskets and loctite 515 or 518.
So...
I decided that I'd buy some other aftermarket cylinder kits and see what I can do with them. The cylinders I got were both 346xp 44.3 clones from ebay ... UK kit and Kafar kit.
I also GOT SENT an OEM 346xp cylinder kit.... THANKS @bplust the trade here was that he sent me the kit and a parts saw, and I build him a ported saw. I get the comparison, he gets the saw. good deal I think.
So now I have 5 saws. ..... THE CONFOUNDERS.........
#1, my oem 45mm saw may not be ported to the exact same specs. Don't remember exactly what I did.
#2, my hyway saw cylinder and the new cylinder just sent to me by HL Supply are two different cylinders. Hyway must have updated their design. The new plating ROCKS, but the combustion chamber is smaller.
So, even if someone wanted to replicate my hyway saw it wouldn't be possible because the old cylinder isn't available.
old hyway:
new hyway:
For the above test I used the same size bar on all the saws.. husky oem 16" 325 050 66dl. I bought BRAND NEW CHAINS from leftcoastsupply for all of the saws. I ran the saws dry and only used trufuel 40:1 for the comparison.
Now the monkey wrench. I asked the group for a stock 350 to run against my saws. @paragonbuilder said his saw was stock except for a muff mod and that we could run that. ok. Welp, as you can see from the vids, the STOCK saw runs right with any of the other saws in the group. It consistently gets 10 second times. and though saw #4 and #5 get sub 10 seconds, the stock saw isn't getting trounced.
Just this am I found out the stock saw has 100 psi comp. 100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. All of my saws are over 150, and my hyway saw is closer to 175 comp.
The stock saw isn't stock... it has a muffler mod. Looking closer, it has about triple the exhaust area any of my saws do and no screen. Pretty sure most of my saws were running screen. NONE have that much exhaust area though.
Yes I know I should have run the same B&C on each saw, but overall it didn't really seem like that was an issue. The test ran pretty much as expected, except for the one outlier which is that stock saw.
Honestly, I'm pretty bummed. I spent a PILE of time and a PILE of money getting this test best I could.
Worse, it really seems like all the effort I have put towards milling, porting, polishing, measuring, increasing compression etc has all either been for naught or just not worth it as compared to doing a simple muff mod?
-Mattyo
The reveal:
