If you are going to shop the used market there is risk. Saws purchased on line will often have "smoked" P/C's in them, or other major issues the owner knows about and isn't wanting to deal with, so basically dumping his issues on someone else.
I work on power equipment daily in the shop and one of the first things we do here when something comes in is to check compression and/or remove the muffler and take a gander at the exhaust side of the piston. It will tell the story.
Recently I was given a Husqvarna 51 and a Mac 10-10. Both had sat for decades in a work shop and covered with oil, grease, grime, metal chips, wood chips and dirt. They looked like they needed to be tossed out. Remarkably under all that were two saws in very good to excellent shape on the exterior.
It took a couple of hours and I was looking at two very nice saws. I kept the Mac 10-10, lord knows why as it's the loudest saw I've ever ran, double hearing protection required. I gave the 51 to one of my employees. It needed a fuel line and carb kit, the Mac only needed the carb and fuel system cleaned but I put a fuel line on it while I was there. I gave the 51 to one of my employees so don't have pics of it, but it was really nice.
I don't spend a lot of time shopping the local shoppers mart adds or CL, but enough saws get dumped in my lap that I'll occasionally come up with good saw to add to the line-up, re-sell or do the charity thing.
It typically goes one of two ways with this sort of thing, and important to know. It will typically be a very minor problem that got the saw shelved and easy/low cost repair or it's been straight gassed or ran lean enough that considerable time/funds will be needed to get it up to par. Parts support is poor for many older models and NOT getting any better. If/when you can find an OEM P/C for some of these older Husky's expect to pay dearly for them, no free lunches there. Since I have to put my name on repair work done here I woln't touch an offshore/aftermarket P/C with a ten foot pole and to date have had a 100 percent success rate with OEM.
My 268XP is one of the decent finds I stumbled into over the years. It was laying just inside the door of a local Amish saw shop. It was pretty "rough" on the exterior and would start but not stay running. The Amish shop owner sold it to me for $125 as they didn't want to deal with it. I got it running pretty well but it was problematic from day one so I didn't use it all that much. It also had a very strange issue that drove my nucking futz. It would cut like a 372XP on steroids down thru a log, but on the upstroke it lost power and would barely finish the cut. Being completely baffled by the symptoms and seeing no obvious cause I gave up on it as am typically behind many months in the shop with customer work.
Anyhow, short version of the long story I decided one weekend to completely go thru the 268XP and either figure it out or bury it behind the shop. It got crank seals, anti-vibe mounts, fuel line, filter, tank vent, carb kit, and intake gaskets.
The rubber mounts turned out to be the issue with low power on up-cuts as it allowed the two main components to move far enough away from each other it pulled the throttle linkage back and the throttle plate was nearly closed! I opted for the harder mounts at that time (probably a mistake) but it did the trick..
The intermittent running issue turned out to be a piece a trash under a welch plug in the Tillotson carb. Once fully up to par the 268XP has another zillion or so hours on it with only one glitch was a recent failed spark plug.
So why am I writing a book and all the rambling. I do this for a living, every single day since 2003. I'm a true Husqvarna enthusiast and think that you can't beat the power to weight of many of their saws combined with being very well built and will last a lifetime if properly maintained. Even so I don't let the "Ford/Chevy/Dodge" truck brand loyalty mentality cloud my judgement or influence my decision making when it comes to these things. When folks drag junk in here that's going to take $200-300 to repair and they are going to have a polished POS when done I very quickly advise them to purchase something new with a full warranty like the Echo CS-590. I've had ZERO, and that means not one single problem with all the ones I've sent out of here purchased NIB and given a quick muffler deflector mod and limiter cap mod/custom tuning.
I've had a number of later model "box store" Husqvarna and Stihls in here and they are clamshell plastic throw-away disposable saws for the most part, and many cost as much or more than the Echo CS-590.
Anyhow, I wish you well on your quest and certainly hope that you can nail down that Husqvarna XP saw (I'd stay away from Rancher, mid-range, clam-shell, and low end models) and not end up with a butt-ton of money to get it up to par.......Cliff
PS: two photos below, the Mac 10-10 and a Husqvarna 50 (from an Estate sale not running) with about 2 hours run time on it......
