Air filters

[bwalker]

Which is even more alarming that my dealer sold me what they did. Kinda makes me lose a little faith. I think I will take my old filter in with the new one they supplied me and ask for a refund if they can not get me a suitable replacement.

Most dealers and techs for that matter are pretty clueless.

 

[calamari]

The left one is nylon and is meant for winter conditions. I had one on a 440, that thing sucked stuff in like it wasn't even wearing a filter. I personally run Maxflow filters on all the Stihl saws I can, but if you prefer the oem setup you'll want to find a filter like the one shown below:

That looks like a proper filter. My Makita EA 6100 has a large filter of similar design. I check inside the filter housing and I cut a lot of hot dry oak. I rub my finger along the internal surface and in addition to not seeing any material, I can't feel any either. I've used the saw for over two years now with the original filter still working fine. I blow it out regularly. Not running a filter is asking for premature wear. If they didn't need it, they wouldn't have put one on the saw and would have used a different method to lower the intake noise level.
Having fuel/oil mix inside the filter housing is just the nature of 2 strokes. Part of the cycle allows a little back wash to come out of the carburetor since there's no valves to create a tight seal. I remember going to go cart races where they just ran a velocity stack on the hot class engines and there was always a standing column of mist above the carb that you could see when it got up to high RPM. I think there's a very short lag time even with reed valves given the inside on modern saw's filter housings are still moist.