New OEM Piston chipping

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Hmm, near as I can tell that is not a synthetic or synthetic blend. Interesting.

Red Armor is synthetic blend. They do not say this anywhere on the bottle or on their website; so, I emailed them and asked them. They replied it is a synthetic blend. Seems odd they don't advertise it as synthetic blend; it is like they are trying to hide the fact IMO.
 
Red Armor is synthetic blend. They do not say this anywhere on the bottle or on their website; so, I emailed them and asked them. They replied it is a synthetic blend. Seems odd they don't advertise it as synthetic blend; it is like they are trying to hide the fact IMO.

Yeah, it does seem odd they don't advertise it as a synthetic blend. Obviously good lubricity and film strength, plus detergents of a FD oil.
 
I will pull a new one and look at the edges but I believe they all have the knife edge on the sides of the skirt.

That would not be surprising at all. How ever with that much rib overlay there is going to be a lot of thickness variance, A minute or so worth of hand finishing and the serrated edge risks go away. Then on to the crappy bottom and corners.

Little bit of filing/drawing, little light sanding and better than new. Looks like there is lots of wiggle room on the piston and the cylinder.
 
That would not be surprising at all. How ever with that much rib overlay there is going to be a lot of thickness variance, A minute or so worth of hand finishing and the serrated edge risks go away. Then on to the crappy bottom and corners.

Little bit of filing/drawing, little light sanding and better than new. Looks like there is lots of wiggle room on the piston and the cylinder.

Those OEM pistons are now over $80 each.

The AM ones purchased look much better(based on the ad pics), and are $50 cheaper.

I wish there was a complete AM piston and cylinder kit.
 
Looks to be the same. Should not be a problem, would not,could not if it was finished.

Jon1212, I would recommend that you work over the piston that you already have before dropping anymore money in that cylinder. Clean/shape the piston up and get it to run consistently.

I would be disappointed to pay $80.00+ for that piston, how much is the OEM piston and cylinder set?
 
OEM P&C is $196. Piston is $87. Piston used to be $70 but was just recently revised and the price went up.
 
Looks to be the same. Should not be a problem, would not,could not if it was finished.

Jon1212, I would recommend that you work over the piston that you already have before dropping anymore money in that cylinder. Clean/shape the piston up and get it to run consistently.

I would be disappointed to pay $80.00+ for that piston, how much is the OEM piston and cylinder set?

All really good feedback, and advice. Thank you.

I bought the OEM piston before this last price increase, and I "only" paid $65.....

The pricing of the complete OEM top end is $195-235 depending on source. Kind of ludicrous on a $400-450 saw.
 
Jon. I have a different theory. Did one of your bearings come apart? It may be something other than the piston dumping the debris in there.
 
Jon. I have a different theory. Did one of your bearings come apart? It may be something other than the piston dumping the debris in there.

Bill,

I appreciate your input. However, in my communications with Nate (fordf150), he mentioned that he had the same problem with an OEM piston in a 5100 series saw that had been modified for higher compression(squish band cut). His saw showed similar premature skirt wear, and scuffing after only a few tanks of fuel through the saw, as well.
 
Manufacturing tolerances are just that, tolerances (+ or -). Many manufacturers will match pistons and cylinders to get the right clearance when they assemble an engine. It looks like you may have had a tighter jug and then put in a slightly oversize piston.

The piston is tapered at the top to allow for heat expansion. The bottom of the skirt is symmetrical and got a bit tight when it got hot. Since it didn't seize when you were using it, it is probably 'fitted' properly now. You can always take a bit of emery cloth to those high spots if you're concerned. Perhaps the expanded piston caused the loss of power you noticed. The extra friction from the expanded piston will cause a drop in power, I've seen it before.

I don't see chips on the side of the piston, just the ends of the hatch marks. The rings and cylinder don't have any scores, so it doesn't appear anything got between them.

On two-stroke engines, rings will often wear quite rapidly where the bridge between the ports protrudes in with less piston/ring clearance. That's because the bridge will run cooler with mixture cooling both sides of the bridge and the bridge doesn't expand at the same rate as other parts of the cylinder. Open port cylinders are notorious for that type of ring wear. I don't see the tell tale carbon track on the cylinder that indicates a notched ring, but it is something to check.

A 40 psi drop in compression is considerable and I can't see anything in the photos that would explain it. Perhaps you had some assembly lube still in the cylinder when you first checked it. That would be easy enough to check, just put it back together with some more assembly lube and re-check the compression, then check it again after running it a while.
mm hhhh..been there.. assembled a small saw,,and used too much 2 cyl oil upon assembly.......near broke muh fingers,,caused it kicked back hard on me.....
 
Bill,

I appreciate your input. However, in my communications with Nate (fordf150), he mentioned that he had the same problem with an OEM piston in a 5100 series saw that had been modified for higher compression(squish band cut). His saw showed similar premature skirt wear, and scuffing.
I looked and my scuffed piston is long gone or buried to deep in the pile to find it.

now my question is....Is it really to much compression that caused it or just a coincidence? Yours is barely above stock compression but at sea level would probably be in the 230-240 range like mine was.

Can someone that has built some of these saws comment? mine scuffed the skirts similar to Jon's....will compression do it or is it possible that too small a squish caused it? mine was around .017 squish with no base gasket. My thoughts are somewhere in the range of possibly to much compression, causing to much heat which these saws were kinda known for having an issue with anyway.
 
Not according to their website.

The AM one I bought was on the "A" Lunch Special, and comes with either Chicken Chow Mein, or Pork Fried Rice.
Too bad it wasn't peanut butter chicken. Good sh!t. Would a made it all worth it.

But seriously, if your bore checks out OK by being round, I'd sand/file a 45° bevel on your piston skirt (if your ported openings allow a slightly narrower skirt) and replace your rings if the end gap is more than .020ish
 
jonathan do you recall if the pitting in the squish band area was evident prior to the new top end? It does look like pitting more than mechanical damage from debris but just curious.
 
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