Is this too much to ask a saw shop?

[blsnelling]

View attachment 520097

Are you referring to the engine pan??
Ref. # 15?
Part number #4180 021 2500
Same part on all 3 models.

No.

 

[HarleyT]

What are you referring to?

 

[HarleyT]

Clutch drum housing?

 

[CR888]

Clearing saws have a much different purpose to trimmers and medium sized brushcutters.What I look for is not just horsepower or displacement but solid shaft diameter size. Many mid sized brush cutters have near enough power to do clearing work, but they are not built strong enough to do it daily in a professional sense.

 

[HarleyT]

Drum housing?

 

[HarleyT]

Clearing saws have a much different purpose to trimmers and medium sized brushcutters.What I look for is not just horsepower or displacement but solid shaft diameter size. Many mid sized brush cutters have near enough power to do clearing work, but they are not built strong enough to do it daily in a professional sense.

The original poster isn't using it as hard as all that, I would think that he could try a fs90, just for fun... He could use it
when his $1000 trimmers are taking a ride to the dealer. I mean, one of his chainsaws is a 20 year old Husky 55.
He started this thread because his expensive "clearing saws" were a bit of a disappointment. I think that he would be better served by at least trying one and see how it does. I am sure it would last a bit, while the shops were playing with his $1000 trimmers some more, he would at least be getting something done.........

 

[Mattyo]

To the OP ....

if you can't find a competent mechanic, then YOU have to be the mechanic. This IS your business, you either need to know it in and out, have competent help, or get out of the business (and that goes for ALL small business people).

a husky 55? seriously?? you are a pro and you are expecting a homeowner grade saw to go all day for years on end? nothing against the 55, i know a lot of guys have them and have been running them for years, but this is a backup saw... for a pro anyway

346xp, now we are talkin... but even the 346's have issues. tank vents come to mind, they can clog and then the saw shuts down after 10-15 min of run time.

How about you learn how to do some fast diagnostics on a saw #1 ... #2.... if you are a pro you need a lot more saws. There are pro's here that have sheds full of them...bring 8-10 or more in the truck, use what works and work on the ones that don't later. Either that or you are shelling out big $$ every time your saw enters the shop.

It IS possible to use canned gas, or import the ethanol free stuff...if you are as paranoid about the ethanol as I am.

I understand the depression with saws... believe me. They can be very frustrating.

 

[HarleyT]

This is what I understand what a brushcutter should be able to hold up to.



and this


and if you have a mulcher blade(like in the second video) mounted to one of your hobby trimmers, after hitting the ground/stone/etc. a few times to many(and it happens very fast) the gear head will be dead very soon. Even with the heavy duty brushcutters the pros replace about once a year the gearing head!


You are recomending repairs on the job site, while clearly he has NO interest in doing so! What a stupid recomendation is that? Wasteing time repairing equiment while your customer is waiting? The customer doesn't give a sh... load if you have defects he wants the job done, further if you buy really good equipement you will have easily paid for them in short order, because you can do more jobs in the same time it takes to repair some low cost junk...

7

Watching these videos doesn't impress me much, I use my fs90 like that all of the time, still have the original gearhead. Although, I do have a spare gearhead for the stringhead, it is much easier to swap out in the field.
And of course I have my ht sawhead too.

 

[HuskyHeadDave]

Hmm, sometimes I have employees help me, sometimes I don't. Sure, some people learning saws are hard on them (I take care of sharpening, for example). Some repairs are just part of owning a saw. The trigger systems on brush saws are prone to bad luck - I broke one trigger myself when a small widow-maker hit it, and stretched a throttle cable by snagging it on slash. Designs of those systems are improving steadily to minimize those risks.

The frustration has been from taking a saw in for the same problem more than once - too much air in the mix leading to the saw idling up. Brush saws don't have a chain brake and though you have to try hard to touch the blade, it can be done and they aren't safe to run with the blade constantly spinning. Replace one bit of the fuel system, six months or a year later later go replace another one.

One question I had is - even aside from having Ethanol in them a long time ago, (run dry and stored empty always), does fuel line and the other parts in contact with fuel last forever? Is it normal to consider replacing fuel line, etc., before having the engine completely torn down?

I'm not running every day like loggers who expect to just replace a saw every two years, I do non-saw jobs quite often as well. That does make it difficult to estimate how much use I have on some saws. There were years where I couldn't win a bid for anything for the brush saws so I wonder how fuel components age. I rotate the brush saws through steady use the best I can, though any more I can just use whichever one is working. (Wouldn't it be nice if saws had an hour meter like heavy equipment?) In June I had two brush saws working. I picked them up in August and both were down within an hour. One of the pair that was down in June seems OK with just a fresh tune-up. We'll see.

I haven't had any intake boots torn physically, just corrosion issues with them.

I use NGK plugs. On the 55, with the new carb the plug was completely black in one hour of use. Gave it back to the shop, went back in the woods, same result again. I got it tuned back from being so rich, but it has never made an 8 hour day since.

I don't know what to think about the 346 that now won't run at all. Two shops in two months.

I am switching to Stihl for brush saws when I can, probably buying my first in a month or so. The 335s were $950 out the door and it isn't as simple to just switch once you own them. Before 2011, I rarely needed any help for my Husqy chainsaws. I would like to work on them myself but don't really have any shop space aside from the truck tailgate. I can do the basics, wash the filters, etc. and am slowly learning to tweak the jets beyond just turning the T 1/8 either way, but as things get more complex I feel like I could probably earn more money running saws and paying a professional to do it right than I could by taking a lot of time to learn how to take a carb or trigger assembly apart and maybe not getting it put back together right.

I buy No Ethanol gas always, now, and have for some time. I run full synthetic 50:1. I have to wonder how much I damaged the fuel systems before I knew; I guess one part of why I wrote that up. I have a friend who runs aviation gas and he says he has never had as many issues with mostly the same models of saws that I run.

I get along fine with my shop where I go now. I defer to their experience on not needing to replace entire fuel systems. I don't get a sense they can re-build saws - they have saws to fix arriving by the pallet load. Another shop I like reports a four month wait for anything dropped off.

Buy a good contact tach for a hundred bucks to fatten (richer) your saws a bit. Buy or make 40:1 atleast and add a bit of Startron .... I'm closer to 36:1 with an alcohol buster/water cover. I can't imagine not owning a tach and turning the screws on my saws... You could be lean as all hell! Buy ten foot of tygon fuel line.... It takes ten to fifteen minutes to replace a fuel line. A milk crate in the bath tub is a work bench if need be...easy to cleanup too! If you make money with your tools you should learn them inside and out... Hell, you can throw in a fuel line with a new filter faster then you can drive to town...man! Big air tank in the back of the truck to lightly blast off chips and dust before any openings to your engine or tanks is good money too! You need like a good plastic ammo box with a couple of tools to work on any saws you run... I can't fathom going to work without tools....hell man... Life (sh't) Happens!!!

 

[a. palmer jr.]

I don't use ethanol in chainsaws, aside from the corrosion thing ethanol will not produce the same power as gasoline. People buy bigger engines for more power and take it back away by using ethanol. Race cars use alcohol based fuels but they have higher compression ratio than chainsaws and other equipment.

 

[svk]

Hope the op shows up after getting 4 pages worth of replies.

 

[bayard]

fs 250 is a beast and a few dollars. but it will not brake.

 

[7sleeper]

Watching these videos doesn't impress me much, I use my fs90 like that all of the time, still have the original gearhead. Although, I do have a spare gearhead for the stringhead, it is much easier to swap out in the field.
And of course I have my ht sawhead too.

Quit bragging, make a vid of your fs90 with a mulcher blade doing stuff like in the vid.

7

 

[HarleyT]

Don't have a camera, I use a big tri-blade, would be interested in getting one of those blades shown in the second video.

 

[newforest]

Writing a planting bid proposal tonight, can only skim some of this. Thanks everyone for reading and responding.

I use clearing saws for Forestry work on sites of 2-70+ acres. I think anything smaller than the 40cc class I run now is better suited for small property management type work where you can pick up a chainsaw easily enough. I might cut 200 2" stems and then run into three 5" Oak I need to cut. Do I wade back through 100 yards of slash to get a chainsaw? I am looking forward to running the 50cc Stihl, though assembling more than one of them will be very slow. Husky hasn't released a new clearing saw model in many years now and quit selling their 50cc model altogether, and haven't put Auto-Tune in any of them yet. My friends in Canada report that hundreds of those M-Tronic 560s are in use up there and zero Husqvarnas.

The dynamics are the same as with chainsaws. You can cut a 20" tree with a 50cc saw if you have to, but how many of those will you do like that in one day? How long would that saw last? I can't use trimmers with a blade for woody stems. I will check the more exact details of the suggestions soon. I only sometimes get to cut Pine all day, I have probably more work in deciduous species (Soft Maple primarily) and every so often shade-grown suppressed trees can have essentially a kiln dried 2x2 in the centers.

I only hope my 55 can be a back-up saw when I need one. For example I have a friend who helps me on weekends in the fall for extra Xmas spending money, but he owns a 70cc and a 90cc saw, too big for the work I do. I ran the 55 for two years (NOT year-round), 2-3 weeks at a time, and basically retired it when I bought a 346XP. I let my dad use it some one winter and then it had issues it has never recovered from. I bought the 55 because my Dad owns a couple and before ethanol problems hit, saw problems were things like broken muffler bolts and hard mechanical issues that could be solved with a spare parts saw around. Swapping rubber parts isn't the same.

When I had one of the clearing saws finally diagnosed with a bad intake boot I started to wonder - what is the point of replacing the rubber parts of a carb, but not the fuel line or the boot? If bad fuel or bad storage on my part damaged one part of the fuel system, the others probably took some problems too. That saw had first the carb replaced (my original mechanic never told me I could just have the carb re-built, we were both learning about ethanol problems the hard way). Then a year later it had the fuel lines replaced. Then it continued to build idle = air leak. No one could find it. I didn't know about intake boots either. Finally my friend's local shop in a neighboring state found it. The saw ran almost like new for the first time in years. Unfortunately, these boots seem to be stuck somewhere on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, as they are back-ordered for at least another month out right now, so I can't put them in the other two saws.

Someone mentioned the definition of insanity. To me it seems silly to replace cheap, small little parts of the fuel system one at a time. I feel fairly sure age alone causes them issues. Do I perfectly purge the line every time I stop using a saw? Does weather or client or employee or vehicle chaos change things when there might be fuel in a saw? Do I leave them for six months with a little fuel in them (No). Six-ten days sometimes, possibly.

When problems hit my 346 this spring, it was the last day of a job. After lunch it just got more and more raggedy. But I was moving on to other work - planting, very time sensitive. I would be busy with 7 day weeks for two months. Normally I would have checked the plug and filter myself and probably put in a new one out of my tool box, but I was out of spares of each right then. That would be just to get started on diagnosing it. Maybe I would have wire brushed the plug and listened again, turned to my more experienced friend and perhaps taken a new go at turning the jets on my own. Simple problems I can fix. Today I moved the T up on my one working brush saw another 1/8 turn after four stalls in an hour and got it back to the sweet spot. I can only pray it stays there for a while.

But since I had to go to the shop to get a good plug and filter for the toolbox anyway (and ask for help with the 55, again), I asked them to take a look, also in large part because my gut feeling was it wasn't just an over-used plug or dirty filter as I do change them perhaps too often. And they ended up replacing one of the rubber parts, though I didn't jot down exactly which in my saw notebook unfortunately and that particular shop doesn't give detailed receipts. It ran for about two tanks and then became nearly impossible to start. But I was off to another job and I put it in a shop there, for once just 15 minutes from the site's gate. They ordered the ubiquitous 'carb kit', installed it, and gave it back to me a month later. Now it doesn't run for even ten minutes.


Thanks someone for the tip on the vent. It has been worked on twice on that saw, for leaking like a sieve. One item I figured better for an experienced guy to sort out. I wouldn't guess a plugged vent could shut down the saw.

I have plenty to learn and this site helps some times. I don't run the saws year-round, but I have been running saws on and off . I just know several trips to the shop could have been saved with replacing the whole fuel system at once, rather than the wait-till-it-breaks approach. But when I request that all of the fuel handling parts be replaced, I am talked out of it every time. And eventually I am back at the shop to replace a fuel related part.

I'll read the whole thread soon, good night.

 

[Little Al]

What Huskys you running?

We have 4 each of 3120xp's, 372xp's 2 off 562xp & a 2 550 xp's for what is termed in the company as " Snot gobblers" cleaning of the wispy growth from the trunks if the processor can't get to the standing wood ( steep sloping ground, boggy land etc) we trade in 2 of the saws with the most run time every 2 years & use Sugi bars on all the saws a mix of standard & reduced weight we " brew our own bar oil, Buying a straight oil & adding "Tacifier" to suit,the fuel premix oil is obtained from a small blending company 100% synth at a ratio of just north of 40/1 the oem spark plugs are changed out for Denso's as over the years they are the only brand that we have not had any problems with we use a mix of Stihl & Blount chains.

 

[Mattyo]

OP

I'm with you on the rubber bits. I understand you need a dead reliable saw, so it makes sense to go the extra mile when its in the shop. Still, you REALLY need extra saws. If planting is really "time sensitive" then you need enough equipment on the truck to get the job done. ie, a one lane highway works fine until there is a problem, and then even a 3 lane highway isn't enough. same with saws. saws have gremlins. they just do. and they annoy me as much as they annoy you, and I'm a dentist.

so ... like I said before, get some extra saws....with warrantees. one suggestion I might have is to pick up the stihl ms150tce. its the tiniest chainsaw stihl makes. its super light, and you can put it in a backpack. so when you are out cutting with your brush cutters and want a little something extra to take down something 6" or so, use the 150. that way you don't have to wade back through brush to get a bigger saw (unless you run into something 12"+)

2nd, how about buying extra parts ahead of time. fuel filters and lines, boots.... even some new carbs, tank vents, air filters. your husky dealer can get them for you of course, or if that bugs ya call spike60 at ashokan turf and timber in NY state. he knows exactly what you need and can get it for you. this way when you walk into a shop, hand them the saw AND the parts and have them replace those parts at minimum while they are in there.

3rd, have a bunch of the same saw. there are two very nice examples of 346xp's in the trading post right now. buy them, and put the 55 on a shelf. this way you stock parts for ONE saw ...346xp

4th, I have shot my video for the teardown of a 346xp...it'll be up on my youtube channel as soon as I get it edited. as soon as I get some parts I'll shoot the vid of the rebuild as well. you will see that it is NOT hard. it would be cheaper for you to swap carbs entirely than it is to have a shop put in a carb kit. and it takes 5 min



more to come

 

[HarleyT]

Now that the sun has come back, I snapped a few pics of my pampered little toy. It is over 10 years old. I'll admit, I did have to get a new blade this year, the old one was getting too much out of balance from the missing metal.

 

[HarleyT]

Sorry about the fogged up camera, still looking for the "chassis" on this thing.

Brad?

 

[HarleyT]

I do have a circular blade that I use on bigger woody stuff, but I haven't used it much since the first time we moved here a decade or so ago. I use the chainsaw head on tree branches, fruit trees, etc., love that one.