Well, when looking at the sds and a voa I just didn't see where there could be much detergent. And I know the voa won't show much, if anything... And the sds is not much help, either. Hilarious.. .I think you're probably right about Echo and the lack of an ashless oil.
FD oils have ash limits and for good reason, so you won't see much show up on a VOA. VOA are not that accurate at low levels anyways. Two cycle oils have every little additives in them, despite what guys think.
BW that's how I always do it. I have a tach for reference but the ear works just as well for that. When I see or read of ope operators who can't perform simple mechanical tasks it makes me think they're in the wrong business. The very idea of spending hundreds of $ every month for shop labor just makes me feel like I'm going broke. I grew up in a farm equipment dealership and we also sold boats, Mercury motors, and ope. I worked on everything.
Lol
Something to be said for that, for sure. But, does it smell good?
BW.... You say can't choose a ratio based on viscosity, and also that too thick can also be bad .. so what are your thoughts on diluting an oil like, say... HP2? Running it at a leaner ratio like 60:1 or 50:1 since it's a thicker oil. What sacrifice do you see when that is done? I have run 50:1 and it seems to run well, run clean... But what is lost when diluting an oil beyond the normally run ratios, such as HP2 @ 50:1 instead of Honda's mentioned 32:1? I understand the obvious ... Less oil... But what about the additives being lessened? Conversely, enriching an oil can have issues. Based on your experience what have you seen, and what are the pitfalls of this? You know, with a br800 scrubbing the piston crown to get a better judgement of cleanliness on a br800 just isn't feasible. You probably don't have a lot of time with a 4-mix and I don't love the design, but I have 3 of them and before I move on I want to finish my tinkering
All oils smell good to a mechanic, some just smell better than the majority.
The statements of shindiawa and stihl co-development of the 4-mix/hybrid 4 was a stop gap because of being behind on 2 stokes I don’t exactly buy. They did this design very purposefully to save on over emissions from the lines to continue to sell the large pro level 2 cycles, if this was to be temporary they wouldn’t continue to use/develop them for the last 25 years. They were designed to be an efficient, quieter 4 cycle that could run at any angle and be smaller and lighter because of no oil sump. I’m betting this new echo revival of the hybrid 4 will just continue down the line and is to save on emissions also so they can continue the non stratto saws. Personally while more complex a 4-mix is smooth and has good torque plus was never designed or was I intended to make it into an actual chainsaw. Like it or not the 4-mix and hybrid 4 aren’t going anywhere and they want clean not too thick of oil it seems. The ultra was developed for the 4-mix because the orange bottle was causing wrist pin bushing failures on the early design 4-mix and as much as anyone hates it works well for this purpose. If Stihl thought it was going to drive warranty pill costs up they wouldn’t double your warranty when buying it.
Plus they crank nicely due to ACR.
Stihl at the time was very much behind Husky/Redmax. Let's not forget that the only way Stihl got Stratocharged saws and Mtronic was from an EU anti trust suit.
Auto compression release, sweeden has a best for the world clause to share emissions technology that’s why Stihl had the ability to use the technology that husky bought when they got redmax. And it’s a horrible design in your opinion but has been used for 25 years already and not going anywhere in fact I’ll bet it gets more used in the future.
Back when I bought my stihl polesaw, the dealer never said anything about a 4 mix . It was not on the tag hanging on it or anything. When I started it for the first time I thought to myself, this thing sounds funny. I thought some kind of weird muffler or something. I got online and researched and found out about 4 mix. I had never heard of it until then. It starts easy and runs good but if I would have known it wasn't a 2 stroke I wouldn't have bought it.
