I'm not generally one to kiss and tell, but this story makes me willing to lay out some cards in the hopes of protecting some other AS members. Maybe I should have spoken up earlier.
I bought a 441 cm described as "as new with only a few tanks through it" or something like that, from Tyrel (tgerloff) back in October last year. The condition of the saw was far from consistent with the description. It was well down on power compared to the other (stock) 441's I've got, so I opened it up to take a look. Somebody who had never had a 441 and bought it might have thought that was how they were supposed to run, and might have been afraid to open it up and decided to just live with it. The cylinder was a carbon copy of the one in this thread, right down to the blue goop. Mine wasn't quite as butchered as the one shown, but it had plenty of other problems. Tyrel changed his story and said someone had ported it for him etc... but it was pretty clear he'd done it himself. In the end we settled on him covering the cost of a new top end and I was happy with that. Time passed and the new top end never materialized and the story kept changing. This was around the time of the Jasha 261 incident and I gave Brad a heads up because it sounded like that whole thing would turn out bad and I was thinking that both the buyer of the saw and Jasha would be feeling uncomfortable. I ended up buying a new top end myself which nmurph sent me, and just wrote it off but Brad must have a way with words because he said something to Tyrel which caused the full purchase price of the saw to appear in my account one day, minus shipping.
Well, nobody can complain about a free saw, and I figured he'd made it more than right and I was happy enough. I ended up paying for the new top end, a muffler, gaskets etc and some small parts. That saw has always been weird though, and I've found lots of little things wrong with it over time. It might be worth contacting the guy about it, might get something out of him. I've still got his number which I would be happy to give to whoever it was bought this saw or Randy.
For your amusement, here's some reading and some pics;
Here's a post tgerloff 'liked'. I thought it might make for some fun reading to go along with the pics. Original post by canadiancarguy;
From my experience with the 441, take your die grinder and stick that rasp as far up those skinny little slits for transfers and widen them, then be careful on the intake port only a small window to work with, raise it a little and widen it a little. Then the other two passages in the intake can be straightened out and widened. Machine the cylinder down a little, sandpaper works for this if you have patience and check the squish for even number all the way around. Then widen the exhaust, cut the muffler in half, cut that snorkel of a baffle out, weld muffler back together and another port. Remove limiter caps from carb, grind the key slot out of the flywheel, advance timing 12 degrees to 16 degrees. Then you will have a 441 that eats 460s at least stock ones. Also watch out for the throttle cable coming out, it made me think I had an air leak and I must tore the saw apart 4 or 5 times trying to see if I have screwed something up with my porting.
From the look of the cylinder, he took it to heart. It's been hacked away pretty much all over, but I don't think a lot was removed from the ports. The muffler is a write off. There were lots of weird little things, like the plug was gapped at over 1/8", and the carb had been reassembled wrong. That one took me some head scratching because I haven't disassembled one of these before. The trigger wouldn't open the throttle the whole way, and it wouldn't click off choke by squeezing the throttle. After comparing it to another saw I found that the cable was in the wrong place, and the carb hadn't been fit into the white plastic thingy on the right hand side. If you think anything can be done with this one I'd be curious to hear.
Of all the places to try and fake guys out with ####ty saw work, why would you pick arboristsite though? It's like trying to pass your finger paintings off as the original mona lisa to a bunch of art critics. He should have gone with ebay. Oh well.....
Shaun