Cerberus
Cerberus the aardvark, not the hell-hound!!
- Local time
- 2:56 PM
- User ID
- 11523
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2020
- Messages
- 292
- Reaction score
- 120
- Location
- Florida (tampa area)
The more I learned how bad poor-fuel was for 2-strokes the more adamant I became about ethanol-free-only but lately like 4-5wks now I've been using almost entirely pre-mix, starting w/ husqvarna's 95 oct and after that expense became hard to justify I settled on that $5 Home Depot "True Fuel" (I get the 50:1 and add a smidge of synthetic oil to make it a 45:1 and use it for my 25cc&33cc climbing saws, 42cc ground saw, 25cc blower) I couldn't even tell you whether one of these is better than the other as I was doing mods to my saws the time I switched to pre-mix.
- Is there major variation in the brands, or brands to avoid? Motomix isn't available anywhere I can find locally, Echo and Husq seem the same as Home Depot & Walmart $5 tins..
- In my limited 'field experience' I've found few who'd ever use pre-mix maybe 2-3 people, one is a friend who uses it same as me in everything except blowers, am curious how common it is -- and/or how important people think it is -- to be concerned on fuel as I know enough guys who just get the cheapest fuel (with ethanol) and half-ass their oil% when mixing (and don't mix thoroughly before filling tanks) Feel like Stihl voids warranties if you use ethanol-based fuels, have seen demo's of how clean the fuel burns relative to gas-station petrol, it's starting to seem pre-mix is as useful a habit/routine as sharpening-frequeny / proper oiling / etc to the saw, can't help but wonder what boosts there are in performance but til all climbing saws are lith-ion at least clean fuel means a boost in longevity for the carb and anything in the gas' path really!
- What should be taken into-account to determine optimal oil% (42:1 etc) for your saws / area? For instance I have my saws with very opened air & exhaust movement so while I did tune H&L (turned each out ~1/8 turn, sounds pretty good am gonna do w/ the tach today) to 'richen'/fatten the air/fuel, I can't stop wondering "maybe you should be running a heavier oil% like 40:1 (actually I think most of my saws want 40:1 and I've just been giving them 45:1 because my ground saw is 50:1 so I mix 45:1 for all....should probably cut that out) But I just expect things like that, or me living in hot / humid / sea-level Florida, could influence "optimal" oil% for my mixes so any info on this would be greatly appreciated as I can't rule-out the opposite (ie maybe going leaner on oil% like 51:1 for high-throughput engines *is* smarter because faster movement *plus* thicker viscosity fluid could be a bit stressful on the internals)
FWIW I care most about optimizing my climbing saws (which're both asking 40:1 OEM), will start at least baselining 40:1 and 50:1 as per OEM spec (can't believe I'd been doing 1 mix sounds real dumb now that I've written it ) but it's so easy to up/down a couple %'s oil, or to give a crap about octane% (if you're always using fresh fuel - isn't octane a stability rating more than anything?), or to be more aggressive about opening-up fuel-flow (high&low jets) on an 'opened-up' powerhead, would love any advice/thoughts on any of these topics thanks!! Oh and for context I currently tune by using my tach solely to verify I don't break max redline RPM's and tune by-ear for everything else (minor tach usage if a tricky idle//low setting on badly mis-set powerhead) and my aim is to keep the chain *still* at idle (is slight movement OK? See it soooo often...), for Low to be set a touch opened/rich and allow snappy/instant-seeming rev-up's, High is then brought up near factory max-rpm out-of-cut, then in-cut richen/lean as needed so it's strong when cutting and goes into 4-stroking when pulled-back from the wood.
[PS- additives? I'll add HEET to my fuel-containers ("ISO-HEET" actually, like $2 at walmart) because the humidity here sucks and this stuff seems to do a good job evap'ing and 'filling' a container IE preventing as much of your fuel from doing that....wish fuel-bags were a thing or rather a common thing am sure google has 'em!]
- Is there major variation in the brands, or brands to avoid? Motomix isn't available anywhere I can find locally, Echo and Husq seem the same as Home Depot & Walmart $5 tins..
- In my limited 'field experience' I've found few who'd ever use pre-mix maybe 2-3 people, one is a friend who uses it same as me in everything except blowers, am curious how common it is -- and/or how important people think it is -- to be concerned on fuel as I know enough guys who just get the cheapest fuel (with ethanol) and half-ass their oil% when mixing (and don't mix thoroughly before filling tanks) Feel like Stihl voids warranties if you use ethanol-based fuels, have seen demo's of how clean the fuel burns relative to gas-station petrol, it's starting to seem pre-mix is as useful a habit/routine as sharpening-frequeny / proper oiling / etc to the saw, can't help but wonder what boosts there are in performance but til all climbing saws are lith-ion at least clean fuel means a boost in longevity for the carb and anything in the gas' path really!
- What should be taken into-account to determine optimal oil% (42:1 etc) for your saws / area? For instance I have my saws with very opened air & exhaust movement so while I did tune H&L (turned each out ~1/8 turn, sounds pretty good am gonna do w/ the tach today) to 'richen'/fatten the air/fuel, I can't stop wondering "maybe you should be running a heavier oil% like 40:1 (actually I think most of my saws want 40:1 and I've just been giving them 45:1 because my ground saw is 50:1 so I mix 45:1 for all....should probably cut that out) But I just expect things like that, or me living in hot / humid / sea-level Florida, could influence "optimal" oil% for my mixes so any info on this would be greatly appreciated as I can't rule-out the opposite (ie maybe going leaner on oil% like 51:1 for high-throughput engines *is* smarter because faster movement *plus* thicker viscosity fluid could be a bit stressful on the internals)
FWIW I care most about optimizing my climbing saws (which're both asking 40:1 OEM), will start at least baselining 40:1 and 50:1 as per OEM spec (can't believe I'd been doing 1 mix sounds real dumb now that I've written it ) but it's so easy to up/down a couple %'s oil, or to give a crap about octane% (if you're always using fresh fuel - isn't octane a stability rating more than anything?), or to be more aggressive about opening-up fuel-flow (high&low jets) on an 'opened-up' powerhead, would love any advice/thoughts on any of these topics thanks!! Oh and for context I currently tune by using my tach solely to verify I don't break max redline RPM's and tune by-ear for everything else (minor tach usage if a tricky idle//low setting on badly mis-set powerhead) and my aim is to keep the chain *still* at idle (is slight movement OK? See it soooo often...), for Low to be set a touch opened/rich and allow snappy/instant-seeming rev-up's, High is then brought up near factory max-rpm out-of-cut, then in-cut richen/lean as needed so it's strong when cutting and goes into 4-stroking when pulled-back from the wood.
[PS- additives? I'll add HEET to my fuel-containers ("ISO-HEET" actually, like $2 at walmart) because the humidity here sucks and this stuff seems to do a good job evap'ing and 'filling' a container IE preventing as much of your fuel from doing that....wish fuel-bags were a thing or rather a common thing am sure google has 'em!]