I decided to get a bit radical. I think the biggest limitation to getting decent port timing and squish settings in trimmer and chainsaw style engines is the fact that these are one piece cylinders with the cylinder head cast into the top. If you start raising up the cylinder to get better exhaust port timing, you increase the squish...not a good thing.
So I decided to get radical and try something I haven't seen done a lot on here on this board.
First I machined a mandrel from 6061 bar stock so I could conduct machining operations to the cylinder in my lathe:
Here's a pic with it installed in the cylinder. It's slip fit into the bore.
Then, I took the GT-2000 cylinder and cut the top off using my bandsaw:
Next, I mounted the cylinder onto the mandrel and then installed it into my lathe using a 5C collet chuck. I designed the mandrel so that the stock bolt holes could be used to support and attached the cylinder to the base flange. I machined the actual mandrel to be a close tolerance slip fit to the stock bore. Here's how it looked with the cylinder installed (before I cut off the top)
OK. So once I cut off the top, I used the mandrel in my lathe to machine the top of the cylinder smooth and square. At this point, I don't know how much to take off, so I machine it to only clean up the top of the cylinder. Later, when I go to set the port timing, and eventually the squish clearance, I will take more off as needed.
And here is the finished product from this operation:
Now this is starting to look like a real cylinder! Something that I can work with to accomplish good porting, tuning and lots of horsepower!