I started mixing in a gallon can just on the assumption that everyone here can't be wrong but does anyone have any proof, not theory, that mixing too much oil with your saw will damage it? I know it runs leaner with more oil because there is less fuel but that really doesn't matter since you have to adjust them anyway depending on the weather. Has anyone seen a 2-stroke that was damaged somehow by running too much oil?
The oil literally drips out of the muffler of my weed eater and maybe I'm just lucky but I have had that thing for years with zero problems and I run the crap out of it all summer at the farm.
Think about it this way. Fuel in the form of gasoline leaves deposits behind as it burns in the form of carbon. This is normal. In a gasoline powered tool, you will find these deposits on the tip of the spark plug after you remove it.Again, this is normal, and after a period of time a spark plug needs to be replaced, not just because the electrode is worn down from repeated firing,but also the deposits can often gunk up the electrode and interfere with the clean spark that is necessary for complete combustion of the fuel.
Now, think about a two stroke additive in the form of oil. The oil is designed to pass through the system to lubricate the bearings and the cylinder walls.In small amounts the oil does its job of lubricating the moving parts, then gets burned in the combustion portion of the cylinder. Have you ever tried to burn used motor oil? It burns sure, but unless the fire is very hot it smolders, boils, and does everything but burn with a nice clean fire. It works the same in your cylinder.
The result of too much oil is an incomplete burn, and leaves an extraordinary amount of carbon deposits on top of the piston and the top of the cylinder, as well as in the exhaust ports. It can and will plug up the muffler baffles and spark arrestor, and i have personally pulled apart a leaf blower that was over oiled. The muffler was plugged slap up, the piston had so much carbon build up on it that the cylinder walls were scored by the particles being trapped between the piston and the cylinder. The carbon had consumed so much room that at the top of the compression stroke the piston was literally slapping the top of the cylinder, and the resulting over compression bent the piston rod. Needless to say, the leaf blower was a complete loss due to the cost of parts alone exceeding the cost of the leaf blower. And no, it was not my leaf blower.
It puzzles me to no end why you would be hesitant to simply measure your oil into a container that would allow a degree of accuracy, considering the cost of replacing a well built machine. There is really no way of determining the exact amount of fuel needed to fill the tank unless you measured precisely the volume needed to fill the tank to begin with and always ran the saw dry, a practice in itself is hard on the machine. And if you took the time to actually measure the exact amount necessary to fill the tank, you could have spent that time measuring out one gallon and dumping in the pre measured and pre packaged oil container. There are far too many manufacturers out there that have made measuring oil a thing of the past by selling measured amounts of two stroke oil to one gallon, two gallon, and five gallon containers, and its nuts not to take advantage of the convenience.
Even if the cost of the tool is not a consideration to you, perhaps you won the lottery or are independently wealthy, but I cant imagine dealing with a tool that will not perform ideally any time you want to get some work done.
