Finally broke something significant on one of my Echo's. I have quite a few in the line-up at this point and to date they have been pretty much flawless. Couple of days ago I was out checking the property and had a HUGE Cherry across one of the paths. The only saw I had with me was the CS-355T. Being older and a little lazy these days I'd didn't make the trip back to the shop for more saw and attacked the Cherry log with the CS-355T. It did a fantastic job of cutting the log and I was able to roll the 3 pretty large sections off the path to come back later and cut the whole thing up with a larger saw.
Good plan right? Oh no, I'm NOT being able to leave well enough alone I decided to work the piss out of the little CS-355T and do some more cutting. Oh yeah, the way the tree fell with the root ball still on it the entire log was elevated about 3' off the ground. How can you pass that up? The litte 355 was going thru that big Cherry log like Grant thru Richmond then all of a sudden it started loosing power and slowing down. Not leaving well enough alone once again I just kep "pushing" it to finish the cut the it stalled out against the clutch. OOPS!
I worked it out of the log and the chain and bar were bone dry. Oh, once again being overly optimistic I figured that I probably ran the oil tank dry as I was cutting for at least 10 minutes. It was just about empty so just figured that was the issue. Back at the shop after refilling with gas/oil it just wasn't oiling the chain very well, then started to do OK. Then as quickly as it started to oil the chain all oil flow stopped.
I quickly tore it down and the oil pump gear is toast. It appears to be a gray plastic material and not replaceable, have to get a new oil pump. The drive gear behind the clutch is metal, so good to go there. I ordered a new genuine Echo part that was nearly $50 instead of the $6-10 offshore replacements that showed up all over the place on a Google search.
Not sure if that's a design flaw with the 355T's but the saw doesn't have that much time on it and very well maintained...........
Good plan right? Oh no, I'm NOT being able to leave well enough alone I decided to work the piss out of the little CS-355T and do some more cutting. Oh yeah, the way the tree fell with the root ball still on it the entire log was elevated about 3' off the ground. How can you pass that up? The litte 355 was going thru that big Cherry log like Grant thru Richmond then all of a sudden it started loosing power and slowing down. Not leaving well enough alone once again I just kep "pushing" it to finish the cut the it stalled out against the clutch. OOPS!
I worked it out of the log and the chain and bar were bone dry. Oh, once again being overly optimistic I figured that I probably ran the oil tank dry as I was cutting for at least 10 minutes. It was just about empty so just figured that was the issue. Back at the shop after refilling with gas/oil it just wasn't oiling the chain very well, then started to do OK. Then as quickly as it started to oil the chain all oil flow stopped.
I quickly tore it down and the oil pump gear is toast. It appears to be a gray plastic material and not replaceable, have to get a new oil pump. The drive gear behind the clutch is metal, so good to go there. I ordered a new genuine Echo part that was nearly $50 instead of the $6-10 offshore replacements that showed up all over the place on a Google search.
Not sure if that's a design flaw with the 355T's but the saw doesn't have that much time on it and very well maintained...........