Dennisthemenace
ArboristSite Operative
Common sense
Stihl Bar Oil- Is it really worth the price?
- Thread starter Somesawguy
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Woodchuckels
ArboristSite Operative
Kinda like pork added to a bill in congress. Maybe we need a line item veto.
Did you know that STP has changed formulations over the years? It is not as thick as it used to be.
Yeah lots of that was going on , Pop & Son outfits . That has been stopped with Ministry of the Environment legislation controlling Oil recycling here . Certificates of Approval are required & monitored & scrutinized by the local Ministry Inspectors monthly . Air Quality monitoring is 24 hr & abatement standards are increasing every yr . Not as lucrative as was once realized . ISO. Quality Control Standards have standardized the way business is carried out & redundant measures are in place to protect the environment much better than was the norm previously . Over lapping Government Agency's also have been established to Regulate / Monitor & Correct . The former Consumer & Commercial Relations Board here in Ontario is now regulated by the TSSA . Talk about letting the weasel into the hen house . Anyhow , everything human design has it failings . The old Internal Responsibility System used by the Ministry of Labour has failed miserably by comparison via the MOE. , where as Facility Operators self police & have let numerous internal inspections lapse & numerous spills to ground or air have occurred , requiring Federal involvement within Provincial jurisdictions , another let the weasel into the hen house scenerio !
Mineral oils have most definately been refined , to the degree they are a synthetic within purity. I use a lot of Group III religiously . Often the benefits of low smoke & odour abatement of Group IV is over rated & not cost effective . Anyone spending $25 to $30+ for certification of FD oil has a poor sence of phiscal responsibility or was born with a gold spoon up his or her ass . Lots of uncertified FC & FD expressed oils out there that are more than adequate for various 2T usages . A lot more 2T engines damaged from dull chains & improper tuning then , poor bar or engine oil mix . P.S. Good idea with the nitile grade gloves when handling used fuels & oils Ben , I do the same !
In my Stihl saws I use hard and depend on, I use Stihl bar oil and the winter mix in really cold weather. (and I never have any worn bar issues due to lack of oil)
Also use Stihl oil for the gas/oil mix.
In my cheaper disposable consumable type none Stihl made saws that I use for trimming, such as Poulans, Craftsman, Homelites, I usually use most any of the cheaper bar oils, sometimes just 30W motor oil in the winter because my cheapo type trim saws don't oil very good with the thicker grade of Stihl oil in cold temps.
Also use Stihl oil for the gas/oil mix.
In my cheaper disposable consumable type none Stihl made saws that I use for trimming, such as Poulans, Craftsman, Homelites, I usually use most any of the cheaper bar oils, sometimes just 30W motor oil in the winter because my cheapo type trim saws don't oil very good with the thicker grade of Stihl oil in cold temps.
This is where the Ultra scenerio arose . Ben was just qualifying that the Stihl Dealer Synthetic was most likely Ultra , which was never intended for chainsaws , rather 4mix blowers & trimmers . It has a long history of poor quality for chainsaw usage . The HP on the other hand is reasonable although not my preference either !
I find that curious... Stihl has enough confidence in HP Ultra to double the warranty on almost all their equipment for non-commercial use (as I recall demo saws and in-tree saws with 90 days warranties are excluded). My son sells Stihl and Husky and by far the biggest problems they see in the shop with outdoor equipment is owner/user neglect, carelessness, and abuse. The next bucket is truly worn out parts that had been maintained (e.g., bars, chains, belts, blades, skids, scraper bars, bushings, pullies) or things like flat tires. A very small fraction of the problems that come in are due manufacturing defects or dealer assembly mistakes... They try their best to cover repairs as warranty claims but quite frankly most of those aren't... It's clueless users and those who don't read the manual that cause the vast majority of the problems. I've seen photos of brand new, never been in the wood, chainsaws that had melted oil pumps and other damage because the owner warmed the saw up with the chain brake engaged. It was sluggish so they kept revving the saw! Yes, there are real defects encountered occasionally... like some MS461s with fuel lines pinched during assembly, and Huskies with bad electronics, but they are are a small minority of jobs. Regarding those 90 day warranties... my son has seen a lot of those tools badly abused and wrecked in that period through no fault of the tools.
I've never had a lubricant failure per se. I try to use the correct type of lubricant for the application whether it is oil, grease, Teflon, graphite, anti-seize, or a solvent/lubricant such as WD-40, Tri-Flow, or Liquid Wrench, etc. This as one size does not fit all! There were a few times in the past 55+ years that I've been working on things where I failed to grease/oil bushings frequently enough on various pieces of equipment. Those were not lubricant failures, they were negligence on my part... Axle bushings on mowers lacking grease fittings have been my Achilles heel! Certainly never had an engine fail due to lubricate failure. In fact, on some of the machines I wore out the engine was the only good thing left!
When Ultra first came out I was given a large quantity of it with the MS361 I bought. Immediately I noticed that the stuff stunk really bad. After running it for awhile I also noticed it was dirty. Subsequently, many other guys found the same thing with picture evidence. It's just not a good oil in a chain saw. It's a FB quality oil which was a standard that was used in the early 1980's. It's also Ashless like marine oil in that it has no detergent additives. Instead it uses dispersent technology, which doesn't function at all over 300 degrees.
One doesn't need to spend alot of money to get into a FC or FD oil. Many are pretty reasonably priced.
Most consumers don’t put enough hours on a saw for it to be an issue. Tree dicks put more time on one in a few months than a homeowner will in his lifetime.
Tomos770
ArboristSite Guru
I have been following that YT channel for a while....unfortunately doesnt have subtitles (for you)....I do understand it though (Serbs are our distant neighbours)
Long story short.....
Stihl 362 MY2014 (video is 4months old...so do the math) came to his service center from a commercial grade user who uses it for cutting firewood for others.....he knows that guy....so he knows that he uses Stihl HP oil exclusively (he is buying material from his service)
It was said that the saw doesnt have power.....that it runs oddly etc. So first he checked sparkplug....and troughout the sparkplug hole he saw that "star" pattern and wrongly asumed that either piston is melting or some foeign metal particles entered into cylinder.....so he pulled its cylinder.
At the end nothing was wrong with P&C unit.....it was its air filter who was not sealing properly and thus letting sawdust into its airsystem (luckily that didnt damaged P&C)
But he was surprised that engine is so spotless and in minth condition after all this usage....and that with mineral Stihl HP
From my readings ash less is about lubrication when there little actual oil present such as during start up. I didn't see anything about detergents per se in regards to low ash vs. ash less. Rather ash less doesn't leave an ash behind to act as a dry lube compared to low ash oils. It also demands running at full throttle to burn the ash off or it will build up. From that respect, ash less is probably useful if you often don't run at full throttle while cutting. I think string trimmers would really benefit from ash less as I seldom hear guys run them at full throttle for long rather they pump the throttle around things that shouldn't be whacked or otherwise lug the engine.
The dispersant properties primarily help the oil break down in the environment. I'd think that if 2 stroke engines were run either at idle or full throttle, that dispersant would work just fine as excess temperature isn't much of a problem. This due to flywheel cooling being better at high RPMs than it is when running the saw too slowly (e.g., half throttle). My Game of Logging trainer indicated you should either idle the saw or run it full throttle. This from a heat and lubrication standpoint and from a safety standpoint (less likely to grab on a bore cut). Full throttle also drives the bar oil pump faster so that the bar is properly lubricated. It seems there is nothing worse than bogging down a saw in a cut as it doesn't lube the cylinder or bar correctly and it generates too much heat.
Regarding the odor, the synthetic ester HP Ultra smells different from petroleum based oil but that doesn't translate to bad or good, it's just different.
From what I've experienced HP Ultra smokes less, doesn't build up on the spark arrestor, and it leaves the combustion chamber and piston quite clean with run with non-ethanol gas. To date I haven't seen a downside. With the fuel stabilizers and non-ethanol I also haven't had any problem with start up with a hedge clipper or string trimmer sits out the winter months. The chainsaws, pole trimmer and back pack blower tend to get year round use.
This is an interesting topic for sure.
For sure... lack of use, neglect, and lack of skill kills more homeowner equipment than does hours of use... Of course buying pro equipment vs. homeowner grade stuff makes a difference too!
Ashless refers to the Sulfated ash bench test that is used to measure the amount of mettalic compounds in the oil. Detergents are calcium and magnesium based so the ash test measures the amounts of these. An oil is ashless when it does not contain detergents. Instead ashless oil uses a nitrogen amine based dispersent technology. The problem with this is dispersent technology doesn't work above 300 degree ring belt temps. This is problematic in an air cooled motor like a chainsaw. The amine are also what makes the Ultra stink. So when you see ashless it does not refer to what you stated at the begining of your post. The rest of the assumptions in regards to ashless oil in your post are equally flawed as well.
Ultra was brought to market in the first place to band aid issues with Stihls 4-Mix engines. I can't comment if it works OK in 4 mix engines, because I won't own a 4 cycle that burns oil on purpose.
It would seem our reference sources are somewhat in conflict... Part of this could be context. References in my sources were also are made to 2 stroke motorcycles, aircraft, race/sports cars and other engine applications beyond outdoor power equipment. Some of it could be marketing...
One source I'd read (air cooled sports/race cars and aircraft) indicated that ashless dispersant works by encapsulating and dispersing combustion ash out of the engine to prevent buildup and excessive wear. That sounded functionally like a detergent! That's the polar opposite performance of "regular" mix oil I've seen in some engines... particularly in regards to spark arrestor buildup. In a few extreme cases, for example, guys ran way too much non-synthetic mix oil thinking it was better... extreme build up and clogged spark arrestors. Another guy was running mix oil along with Marvel Mystery Oil in the gasoline in his MS461 (as I recall). His thinking was that his repeated cylinder and piston scoring was due to a lack of oil rather than an extreme build up that was breaking off and acting as an abrasive.
A British source I read early on, writing in reference to 2 stroke motorcycles, said that much of what we "know" about mix oil is based on marketing and not scientific testing. With that in mind, as well as the reported post-hoc analyses of OTC oil additives from the 60s-90s, I take a lot of it with a grain of salt. Witness STP paying fines to the Federal Trade Commission over false advertising... I don't think there was ever a bigger oil additive brand than STP.
I go by what I see in practice and my Stihl engines running Ultra work well. They are very clean and start and run reliably. I haven't seen the symptoms of them being dirty as reported by others. It makes me wonder if some of those reports are the result of running Ultra after the engine was "dirty" from running other mix oils previously and the Ultra was cleaning them out?
As an aside, there isn't really much new in the basic design of internal combustion engines. Four and two stroke engines are 150-160 years old... Super chargers are only a bit younger than that. Diesels 130. Turbo chargers are over 100 years old. Fuel injection 70. Even Stihl's 4-mix has been around for 20 years. The materials, tolerances and outputs have changed; the fuels and lubricants have changed; and time has mostly weeded out the problematic. Based on the press releases MotoMix was announced 11 years ago... I didn't find an HP Ultra press release so I don't know when that became available as a stand alone product. If the 4-Mix engines were that much of a problem and MotoMix containing Ultra was the solution why did it take 9 years to come out with MotoMix. Alternatively or why wasn't the engine design discontinued? There are a couple performance related themes I've noticed with 4 mix engines. One is the valves need to be adjusted occasionally. The other is that running the trimmers with excessively long string (no guard/deflector) puts an excessive load on the whole system and increases wear and heat in the engine. Both of those are user issues that would be difficult to blame on how the lubrication is effected.
What I typed is completely accurate. I'd put money on it. The problem is people confuse ash in product descriptions with combustion deposits that are also, well ash..
Ash when used to describe oils refers to the Sulfated ash test I mentioned earlier. The test is called that because a sample of oil is reacted with a strong acid and the resulting mettalic residue called ash is measured.
Dispersents work as you described. Basicly the same mode of action as a soap.
As for marketing. Yes, alot of crap you read on two cycle oils in marketing is terrible. Amsoil is notorious for this, but have gotten somewhat better. Opti still does it. Then you have many companies saying their product "meets" a standard they have never been tested against. You also have companies like Klotz that say their oil meets both TCW3 and Jaso FD standards which isn't even possible..It's a mess!
The other thing is moto mix was stihls answer to the canned fuel market. Had nothing to do with the 4-mix. Ultra was brought out years before for the 4-mix engine. Mettalic ash deposits were building up on the valves causing issues. There answer was to go to an ashless oil, which would be fine in a four stroke because their pistons run much cooler than a two cycle. The problems started when it began to be ran in chainsaws.
I used to use Tractor Supply's brand name bar oil. Then a Rural King opened not too far away a few years ago and get whatever they are pushing at a low price, Harvest King, Cam2 and the last I bought was Mystik Bar Oil at $7/gallon. Can't tell much difference between any of them.
wstan101
ArboristSite Lurker
Yes you are quite right, however it is still extremely sticky and stringy, in the right quantities this recipe is more than adequate for any bar/chain combo. One Husky 51 I own has the original bar on it from 1990. I realize that for the purists out there this is sacrilege, but to each his or her own.
