Our 028AV crapped the bed after 30 years of dedicated service. My father bought a brand new MS 291 to replace it. This thing was terrific for 1 hr of use, and then on the second outing, about a month ago,I was bucking up a fairly large spruce. After I felled the tree, I worked the saw pretty stead for about 10 minutes limbing up and cutting the trunk into 16" lengths. I had the saw pretty well buried into the lower trunk when I start to see smoke coming out around the bar area. This whole time the chain had been moving, the brake was off and there were no signs of any problems.
First I check the bar oil (check) and chain brake (0ff). The chain tension was just fine, but there is a lot of resistance when trying to rotate chain by hand. So I rip into it and find a bunch of burnt up plastic around the sprocket area. It goes without saying that there was OEM Stihl two stroke properly mixed in the gas. I mean this is a brand new saw. So I send it over to my dealer who we originally purchased it from and wait. A month later they come back and say Stihl won't cover the repairs. Stihl claims that I was overreving the saw with the chain brake engaged. Are you kidding me? I've been running Stihl saws since I was 12 and there is no way this is the case.
The estimate for the repair is $541.90 so the saw is basically an assembled inventory of parts that is quite worthless to us. Parts that would need replacing are the chain sprocket, needle cage, worm gear, oil pump, engine housing, various oil seals, the brake band and the clutch.
So as of now my father is out about $500 while getting 1 hr of use out of this brand new high end saw. Stihl just doesn't make 'em like they used to (I ran an 031 and a 1970's 041 farm boss for many years without incident) and I feel that they obviously don't care about retaining customers after this experience. I'd love to hear others' theories on what might have happened, because Stihl's version is not what happened. I am going to call Stihl directly on Monday and try to work this out because I think there was some sort of internal failure that caused this overheat. I will post updates if there is anything to update.
One thing I want to be clear on is that my local dealer did everything they could to try to get this covered for me, but in the end Stihl made the decision not to cover it.
Pictures to follow.
First I check the bar oil (check) and chain brake (0ff). The chain tension was just fine, but there is a lot of resistance when trying to rotate chain by hand. So I rip into it and find a bunch of burnt up plastic around the sprocket area. It goes without saying that there was OEM Stihl two stroke properly mixed in the gas. I mean this is a brand new saw. So I send it over to my dealer who we originally purchased it from and wait. A month later they come back and say Stihl won't cover the repairs. Stihl claims that I was overreving the saw with the chain brake engaged. Are you kidding me? I've been running Stihl saws since I was 12 and there is no way this is the case.
The estimate for the repair is $541.90 so the saw is basically an assembled inventory of parts that is quite worthless to us. Parts that would need replacing are the chain sprocket, needle cage, worm gear, oil pump, engine housing, various oil seals, the brake band and the clutch.
So as of now my father is out about $500 while getting 1 hr of use out of this brand new high end saw. Stihl just doesn't make 'em like they used to (I ran an 031 and a 1970's 041 farm boss for many years without incident) and I feel that they obviously don't care about retaining customers after this experience. I'd love to hear others' theories on what might have happened, because Stihl's version is not what happened. I am going to call Stihl directly on Monday and try to work this out because I think there was some sort of internal failure that caused this overheat. I will post updates if there is anything to update.
One thing I want to be clear on is that my local dealer did everything they could to try to get this covered for me, but in the end Stihl made the decision not to cover it.
Pictures to follow.
