spike60
Addicted to ArboristSite
1996 SN: 6331064 Black tag.
Shep
It's going to be a 1986 if it's a thin ring, as I think the change from the 1mm to 1.5mm ring was 1987.
Service bulletins said that you should not use the thin ring piston in the newer jug, but the thick ring piston could go either way. These thin rings are not the real thin rings that would be seen on early versions of the 162SE or Jonny 630 Super.
As Sawtroll mentioned, "XP" came before the change to air-injection. The air-injection change involved a couple of other items. The flywheel shroud changed, but they also changed the left side of the crankcase at this time.
Early saws, 154's maybe, had a .7mm cylinder gasket that was changed to a 1mm gasket to drop the compression a little bit to improve the idling. A nice interesting fact about this family of saws is that while the 254 had the 1mm gasket, the 262 had a 2mm gasket. And a real quick way to bump the compression in a 262 is obviously to use the 1mm gasket from a 254. Can't skip the gasket in a 254 or 262 as far as I know, as the piston will slap the top of the combustion chamber. Only saw in this family that you can delete the base gasket is the 257.
Back to the original question, the 254 is easily better than the 55CP. The 55CP cylinder is NLA from Husky, so unless you stumble on one, you can't build your own. I got what must have been one of the last 55CP kits that Husky had. Ordered one for a project that I built, and several months later tried to get another for a member and it supercedes to the open port Rancher jug. The 55CP runs nice, and really has some decent compression.
254's are not as common here as are many other saws, but do you notice how much the guys that own them like them? Those that have them have pretty strong feelings about how good they are, and that's a good barometer for judging a saw. I've got three 254XP's and one 154SE. Along with the Jonny 2055, they are a notch above the typical 50cc saw in bigger wood. Kind of halfway to the next class, and a bit of a sleeper. Much like the 555/2258 that not enough guys are paying attention to. :msp_rolleyes: