Well, I went and bought my first new Dolmar. I was so impressed with that 5100 that I did a few weeks ago for @computeruser that I thought I'd try my hand at the 5105.
Here she is on her 1st tank of fuel, sporting a 18" 3/8 bar and running the factory tune. Initial RPM checked showed 12,800. However, she was just barely hitting the rev limiter at 13,500 after a few cuts. The tune was spot on. It would 4-stroke with very light load and clean up immediately. Throttle response and idle were perfect. The chain that came with the saw has the curved over raker gauges. It certainly is not an aggressive chain. It will be coming off and be replaced with a proper chisel chain.
These saws have a cat muffler, so that was the first order of business. Why is Dolmar so cruel to us, putting cats and crazy cages inside mufflers that must be uncrimped and pried apart?!!! This alone makes these saws sooo much more work to mod.
Here's the back half after uncramping it and splitting the halves.
The cat!
Here's the same piece with the spot welds ground out and the cat removed.
This heavy flange is sandwiched in place.
Back on the saw with the heat shield over it.
The deflector needed work as well. Dolmar even spot welded the spark arrestor screen in place. I failed to get a pic of that before removal. I've opened up the deflector quite a lot.
I'm not sure if or how I'll go about getting more area. I might just leave it like this. It sounds plenty open and throaty as is.
You can see the wide mesh stainless screen I added.
Here she is on her 1st tank of fuel, sporting a 18" 3/8 bar and running the factory tune. Initial RPM checked showed 12,800. However, she was just barely hitting the rev limiter at 13,500 after a few cuts. The tune was spot on. It would 4-stroke with very light load and clean up immediately. Throttle response and idle were perfect. The chain that came with the saw has the curved over raker gauges. It certainly is not an aggressive chain. It will be coming off and be replaced with a proper chisel chain.
These saws have a cat muffler, so that was the first order of business. Why is Dolmar so cruel to us, putting cats and crazy cages inside mufflers that must be uncrimped and pried apart?!!! This alone makes these saws sooo much more work to mod.
Here's the back half after uncramping it and splitting the halves.
The cat!
Here's the same piece with the spot welds ground out and the cat removed.
This heavy flange is sandwiched in place.
Back on the saw with the heat shield over it.
The deflector needed work as well. Dolmar even spot welded the spark arrestor screen in place. I failed to get a pic of that before removal. I've opened up the deflector quite a lot.
I'm not sure if or how I'll go about getting more area. I might just leave it like this. It sounds plenty open and throaty as is.
You can see the wide mesh stainless screen I added.