Pioneer P40 - What Do You Think About It?

[Fireaxman]

Visited my sister and brother-in-law in Oregon a while back and got a chance to use his p40 to help clear some conifers around their place. It seems like a good, strong saw, and I just got courious about it. I ran a search on the model on Arboristsite and didn't find much on it.

I have the specs on it from acresinternet.com, but I just wondered if anyone has any experience with the saw. How is it for reliability? What kind of problems have you had with it? And, will it really pull a 28" bar (maximum available size for it)? He presently uses it in mostly soft woods.

 

[smokechaser]

If it runs good, and you like it of course its a good saw. I went to Dryden Ontario in 95 for a fire assignment and the Ministry of natural resources gave us some p40 and p30-somethings ( which they had millions of) and asked us to go ahead and use em till they die. They claimed that they were junk and were trying to replace them with huskies. I personally burned up two with straight gas. Never did get one of those huskies though. Also I have a friend that got a old p51 from his inlaws that had a logging company in north Idaho. The old logger supposedly said that pioneer saws were junk.
But like I said earlier, if you like it and it runs good, than its that good.

 

[Marco]

Pretty decent saw, what I liked about the old Pioneers is you could get a big winter boot through the tail handle so you could start it. I have a P51 that I save for the big stuff with a 32" bar, it pulls it but it's one cube bigger then the P40. Nothing I can think of makes them stand out as being bad, but if it would be your only saw I would keep a good double bit for limbing.

 

[Claude Hébert]

My father gave me his 1975 p-40. He said McCulloch users didn't like the pioneers because they blew up if you handled them like McCulloch (eg always at WOT). Pioneer saws rev up too easily, esp. if you changed the points ignition with electronic ignition. Use a light throttle finger on them and they'll last a long time. My father used to log 22-28 cords every year with it from 1975 to around 2005 and, although today it had trouble running on old gas and bad carb gaskets, it still runs, and just for the sake of it I'll try to make it work correctly again.