sonoransaw
Super OPE Member
- Local time
- 6:33 PM
- User ID
- 11414
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2020
- Messages
- 232
- Reaction score
- 849
- Location
- Arizona
(You can tell by the length of this whether you want to keep reading or not…)
To learn something new you have to dive in, right? And be ready to get roughed up in the waves. How else are you going to learn? I’m a school teacher. I teach English—-poetry and literature and grammar. Right up your alley??? Anyway, I don’t have a mechanical bone in my body. Makes me a great candidate for modding and porting chainsaws, doesn’t it?
My only childhood exposure to chainsaws was where I grew up down in South America. I watched natives cutting boards with saws. They were out in the jungle (barefoot with minimal clothes) cutting big hardwood logs into perfectly even, surprisingly thin boards freehand, guided by an oily string-snapped line.
Later as a college student, I got really into air-cooled VW’s. I took a job at a VW shop. The guys there loved me. They’d stick their middle finger in my face and tell me college wasn’t teaching me sh!t… Cause I sucked at mechanical stuff, what they called “common sense,” and I can’t deny they had a point. I had several jobs at the shop—mopping the floor, running parts to other shops, taking customers to places, breaking in new engines (my favorite was a Thing they put a 1095 in…which hated sitting at red lights (what’s the term for a 4-cylinder doing the equivalent of chainsaw 4-stroking?), but loved a heavy foot at the green), reconditioning brake drums and discs, welding muffler parts together, helping the mechanics with various things.
My favorite job was taking apart blown engines for salvageable parts. I loved seeing how the engine was put together, how the parts all fitted, how they looked when blown up (lots of twisted connecting rods, some blown cylinders and sometimes even a ruptured case). After everything was out, we’d clean the mag case in a big hot steam bath unit. Then we’d take some grease and put it along each seam of the case. Then bolt them together, take them apart again, and inspect. If the grease had disappeared all the way around, the case was good. If it showed up in some spots, it had been overheated and warped…junk. Talk about a lesson in keeping your oil up to level and clean. I’ve been religious about that with my cars ever since seeing those dramatic object lessons.
It was at this time that I bought my first car, a 1968 VW bus. I taught myself to work on that thing, maintaining the engine, adjusting the valves, doing brakes, changing cv joints, some electrical stuff, even a clutch job. It was frustrating at times, but fun overall. And the abuse from the mechanics was relentless. Then I was taking a customer home one day, we were talking, she told me she had a bug in her yard she wanted to get rid of. It wasn’t running. I ended up buying it for $50, and one of the mechanics at the shop helped me haul it home, and it was a good 45 mile drive. They despised me and loved me, those guys.
I decided to hot rod it from the stock 1600 to a 1776. (They said not to put a 1095 in a bus, but an old guy would come to the shop almost every day to b.s. and maybe buy a part or two. He drove a bus powered by his custom 1095, said he even hauled trailers with it. The rules can be broken when you know what you’re doing.) I bought a number of books on the topic, in fact, every book that was available. I’m a book guy. My parents financed the project because I was going to give it to my sister for a college graduation gift. She always wanted a bug. This was over 30 years ago, so I can’t remember all of the little details, but I did a satisfactory job (a mechanic in another state said somebody knew what they were doing).
At the shop, I bored the case. I put in a counterweighted crank, and all of the best components possible. I did some porting of the cylinder heads, lapped the valve seats. I installed an external oil filter. Putting everything together, I carefully followed all torque specs. The final moment of firing up that engine was something I’ll never forget. Whew! She could move! I couldn’t resist a little drag racing around town. The light bodies of those cars don’t hold you back. (Today I have a 1970 bug sitting in the driveway. You can see it in the video background.) So here I am 30 years later turning my attention again to air-cooled engines, not one bit more mechanically gifted, but like before, highly motivated. Being a teacher with six kids of my own to feed at home leaves no extra cash around, so I’m going to practice with what I have.
What do I have? Just call me “clamshell king.” I have a Stihl 251 (my brother just gave me for Christmas), a Poulan 5020 (my second saw bought ten years ago), a Poulan 4620 (someone gave me), a Jonsered 2238 (third saw I bought 7 years ago), an Echo 310 (someone gave me), and a Poulan 3516 (my first saw…the clutch went on it and it’s been sitting in the shed for 12 years). The only reason I have any saws is that we heat exclusively with wood. I have to cut a bunch of it every year. I recently learned that (no thanks to the EPA) the muffler needs more room to breathe. This will improve the saw’s performance, just like with the old VW’s. And it’s easy to do.
Four of the saws I had weren’t working, just sitting in the shed, so I read about adjusting carbs and ordered some inexpensive carb tools (China’s good for some things.). Other than being cheap saws, a big reason my early saws had quit on me was that I strictly used the cheapest gas and oil. I really should have known better. So now I went out and got the best possible gas and oil and put them in one of my dead engines, adjusted the carb, and finally got it running. Then I took off the muffler, gutted it, and put a pipe on it. I already posted this mod (soliciting some interesting reactions). For years this saw wasn’t running, just collecting dust in the shed. Now I don’t want to put it down. Isn’t that what this obsession is all about?
Most of us are doing this not out of necessity, but out of a passion for optimizing the 2-stroke engine. We’re just doing it because we can, and we want to. Stock saws would still get the job done. When you add up all the hours and expense of modding our saws, in the end we’re probably losing money, even if the saws are part of our careers. It’s not primarily a practical endeavor, but one of interest, passion, and desire, and every little effort to improve your saw is going to make you feel better about it and more connected to it. In a way we’re all the same (correct me if I’m wrong), whether we’re career loggers cutting all day with big professional saws, or people with means who just want nice saws even though they don’t necessarily need them, or homeowners who want to optimize their 30 cc light duty saw, but can’t afford and don’t really need anything bigger…
So I’m nerding out on my second muffler mod (for my little Jonsered). First I just put a hole in the front of it and brazed on a tube (never brazed before… got the inspiration for it from afleetcommand’s youtube videos)… I left the baffle in. I liked it but not as much as I did the Echo, which sounds like a dirt bike. I watched a video on Redbull661’s channel where he compares a ported, gutted muffler to a ported muffler with the baffle still in…the gutted one did better. So today I cut off the front of the muffler and brazed on a new face with a bigger tube that makes it sound like my Echo. I love it!
My first porting attempt is on the way, but it’s gonna be with a cheap saw. That won’t dilute the fun though… Can’t you just see a hotrodded, ported Poulan clamshell banshee screaming and shredding logs in my back yard (?!? don’t yawn too big)… Anyway, if I do ever get a “professional” saw to work with, at least I’ll have some skills and experience behind me… I’ll be scouring the OPE forum and begging for help, a lot of which I have already received. Thank you! (Hey, don’t laugh too hard… We all gotta start somewhere…)
To learn something new you have to dive in, right? And be ready to get roughed up in the waves. How else are you going to learn? I’m a school teacher. I teach English—-poetry and literature and grammar. Right up your alley??? Anyway, I don’t have a mechanical bone in my body. Makes me a great candidate for modding and porting chainsaws, doesn’t it?
My only childhood exposure to chainsaws was where I grew up down in South America. I watched natives cutting boards with saws. They were out in the jungle (barefoot with minimal clothes) cutting big hardwood logs into perfectly even, surprisingly thin boards freehand, guided by an oily string-snapped line.
Later as a college student, I got really into air-cooled VW’s. I took a job at a VW shop. The guys there loved me. They’d stick their middle finger in my face and tell me college wasn’t teaching me sh!t… Cause I sucked at mechanical stuff, what they called “common sense,” and I can’t deny they had a point. I had several jobs at the shop—mopping the floor, running parts to other shops, taking customers to places, breaking in new engines (my favorite was a Thing they put a 1095 in…which hated sitting at red lights (what’s the term for a 4-cylinder doing the equivalent of chainsaw 4-stroking?), but loved a heavy foot at the green), reconditioning brake drums and discs, welding muffler parts together, helping the mechanics with various things.
My favorite job was taking apart blown engines for salvageable parts. I loved seeing how the engine was put together, how the parts all fitted, how they looked when blown up (lots of twisted connecting rods, some blown cylinders and sometimes even a ruptured case). After everything was out, we’d clean the mag case in a big hot steam bath unit. Then we’d take some grease and put it along each seam of the case. Then bolt them together, take them apart again, and inspect. If the grease had disappeared all the way around, the case was good. If it showed up in some spots, it had been overheated and warped…junk. Talk about a lesson in keeping your oil up to level and clean. I’ve been religious about that with my cars ever since seeing those dramatic object lessons.
It was at this time that I bought my first car, a 1968 VW bus. I taught myself to work on that thing, maintaining the engine, adjusting the valves, doing brakes, changing cv joints, some electrical stuff, even a clutch job. It was frustrating at times, but fun overall. And the abuse from the mechanics was relentless. Then I was taking a customer home one day, we were talking, she told me she had a bug in her yard she wanted to get rid of. It wasn’t running. I ended up buying it for $50, and one of the mechanics at the shop helped me haul it home, and it was a good 45 mile drive. They despised me and loved me, those guys.
I decided to hot rod it from the stock 1600 to a 1776. (They said not to put a 1095 in a bus, but an old guy would come to the shop almost every day to b.s. and maybe buy a part or two. He drove a bus powered by his custom 1095, said he even hauled trailers with it. The rules can be broken when you know what you’re doing.) I bought a number of books on the topic, in fact, every book that was available. I’m a book guy. My parents financed the project because I was going to give it to my sister for a college graduation gift. She always wanted a bug. This was over 30 years ago, so I can’t remember all of the little details, but I did a satisfactory job (a mechanic in another state said somebody knew what they were doing).
At the shop, I bored the case. I put in a counterweighted crank, and all of the best components possible. I did some porting of the cylinder heads, lapped the valve seats. I installed an external oil filter. Putting everything together, I carefully followed all torque specs. The final moment of firing up that engine was something I’ll never forget. Whew! She could move! I couldn’t resist a little drag racing around town. The light bodies of those cars don’t hold you back. (Today I have a 1970 bug sitting in the driveway. You can see it in the video background.) So here I am 30 years later turning my attention again to air-cooled engines, not one bit more mechanically gifted, but like before, highly motivated. Being a teacher with six kids of my own to feed at home leaves no extra cash around, so I’m going to practice with what I have.
What do I have? Just call me “clamshell king.” I have a Stihl 251 (my brother just gave me for Christmas), a Poulan 5020 (my second saw bought ten years ago), a Poulan 4620 (someone gave me), a Jonsered 2238 (third saw I bought 7 years ago), an Echo 310 (someone gave me), and a Poulan 3516 (my first saw…the clutch went on it and it’s been sitting in the shed for 12 years). The only reason I have any saws is that we heat exclusively with wood. I have to cut a bunch of it every year. I recently learned that (no thanks to the EPA) the muffler needs more room to breathe. This will improve the saw’s performance, just like with the old VW’s. And it’s easy to do.
Four of the saws I had weren’t working, just sitting in the shed, so I read about adjusting carbs and ordered some inexpensive carb tools (China’s good for some things.). Other than being cheap saws, a big reason my early saws had quit on me was that I strictly used the cheapest gas and oil. I really should have known better. So now I went out and got the best possible gas and oil and put them in one of my dead engines, adjusted the carb, and finally got it running. Then I took off the muffler, gutted it, and put a pipe on it. I already posted this mod (soliciting some interesting reactions). For years this saw wasn’t running, just collecting dust in the shed. Now I don’t want to put it down. Isn’t that what this obsession is all about?
Most of us are doing this not out of necessity, but out of a passion for optimizing the 2-stroke engine. We’re just doing it because we can, and we want to. Stock saws would still get the job done. When you add up all the hours and expense of modding our saws, in the end we’re probably losing money, even if the saws are part of our careers. It’s not primarily a practical endeavor, but one of interest, passion, and desire, and every little effort to improve your saw is going to make you feel better about it and more connected to it. In a way we’re all the same (correct me if I’m wrong), whether we’re career loggers cutting all day with big professional saws, or people with means who just want nice saws even though they don’t necessarily need them, or homeowners who want to optimize their 30 cc light duty saw, but can’t afford and don’t really need anything bigger…
So I’m nerding out on my second muffler mod (for my little Jonsered). First I just put a hole in the front of it and brazed on a tube (never brazed before… got the inspiration for it from afleetcommand’s youtube videos)… I left the baffle in. I liked it but not as much as I did the Echo, which sounds like a dirt bike. I watched a video on Redbull661’s channel where he compares a ported, gutted muffler to a ported muffler with the baffle still in…the gutted one did better. So today I cut off the front of the muffler and brazed on a new face with a bigger tube that makes it sound like my Echo. I love it!
My first porting attempt is on the way, but it’s gonna be with a cheap saw. That won’t dilute the fun though… Can’t you just see a hotrodded, ported Poulan clamshell banshee screaming and shredding logs in my back yard (?!? don’t yawn too big)… Anyway, if I do ever get a “professional” saw to work with, at least I’ll have some skills and experience behind me… I’ll be scouring the OPE forum and begging for help, a lot of which I have already received. Thank you! (Hey, don’t laugh too hard… We all gotta start somewhere…)
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