Who's Thinning Their Bar Oil For These Winter Months?

[w8ye]

I learned about the Ford Type "F" transmission fluid (the hard way) back in the late 60's unfortunately. After I got rid of the last Ford with the C4 transmission, that was the end of Type "F".

 

[TreeTangler]

I agree with bcorradi. If it's cold out, I'll usually mess around with some light branches or something for a few minutes to bring the saw up to temp. After the saw has been at temp for a few minutes, even the heavy summer bar oil is pretty fluid in the tank. On older bars and chains that I'm not too worried about, I have run atf or kubota SUDT2 that has come out of my tractor before and they both worked very well in the cold.

 

[RED WOOD]

I used to use the winter grade Stihl bar oil in the blue jug but the price went up almost $5/ gallon. I am not paying $15 for a gallon of bar oil. I just started using a wintergrade oil in a black jug called 'Xtreme'. Works great and only costs $10/ gallon. I do believe winter grade oil flows better and is easier on the chainsaw pump when cutting in the winter. I can tell when I refuel - the oil level is down a lot more when using the wintergrade oil than using the regular oil.

 

[dozerdan]

For the last 5 years I have used nothing but used synthetic air compressor oil. I get it free from a very large screw compressor, that gets its oil changed every 6 month. It hold 20 gal. It comes out and looks like new oil, not like used engine oil.
Yes its thin and it is not sticky but I could care less. I can see no difference in bar/chain life between what I use now and real bar lube.
Yes I know what some of you guys are thinking. I look at it this way. Cheap bar lube is at 10.00 gal. I don't care if you use ATF or any other lube the bar will still last for 5 gallons of the stuff. At 10.00 a gallon it doesn't take long to equal the cost of a new bar.


Later
Dan

 

[w8ye]

I used drained 10W30-40 motor oil strained through a stocking for many years until about 15 yrs ago. I never had any abnormal bar/chain wear that I don't have now using the sticky stuff.

I bought a few gallons of Bar oil from Menard's a couple years ago and it was drain oil from a machinery gear box. It smelled like hypoid oil. The bar oil I used for a couple years before that was Spectrum and it said right on the jug that it was reclaimed.

 

[Wagnerwerks]

My pap used drain oil from farm machinery for years. It was all gear oil made lubricate. He almost never bought bars. He tried them on his disk sander and religiously greased them....I know... Another debate.

 

[Will_C]

We use the Stihl blue jug oil. My father would mix bar oil with used hydraulic fluid when he was logging. I was going to save my synthetic Kubota hydraulic oil when I drained it last summer, but I forgot-besides, I don't use all that much bar oil, compared to a commercial cutter.

Will