Thought I'd put another update in here. Kind of a bummer to see all the pics gone :-(
I broke the pole saw head on the saw last week. I can't work out whether it was a poor design, a casting defect, or I was just too rough with it. The pole saw caught a branch as it came down. When this happens I tend to try to go with the branch than fight it. I find I can usually get the saw out on the way down, but if I fight it I end up wearing the branch. On the odd occasion that I can't free the saw, so long as you're kind of loose in holding it I find that the saw is ok most times. This time it wasn't. The pole saw head cracked at the union between where it bolts onto the shaft and the head itself. No big deal I figured, new saw head and be done with it.
RRP on the pole saw head here in aus turns out the be $650, not far shy of what you can pick up the entire saw for ($500). The hedging head, which is geared and has a precision blade sells for considerably less than that. The hedging head includes the blade also, the pole saw head does not include a bar. You can buy complete small saws for $650. I ended up getting it from my dealer for $490, apparently not much more than their cost if you'll believe that.
I haven't yet worked out if the head I received is a new design, or an old one... but it's different from what came on the saw. There have been a few changes.
The new head;
- tensioner is in the body rather than the side cover
- side cover no longer has a retaining screw
- fasteners are now all the same size (4mm allen key)
- the oil filler cap is now (incredibly!) taller, and a smaller opening
- the bar studs are smaller and don't accept the same bar. Mine may be missing a part
I'm thinking this is a new design. There was no notice on the box about compatibility, or the lack of it. The chain tensioner is now in the body, but is just sitting there and falls out every time you remove the bar. The side cover is much the same. The original oil filler cap was a major design flaw compared to stihl. It was too high, exposed to damage and was very brittle. We already cracked 2 or 3 of them. The new one is even more ridiculously tall, making it worse and the hole is smaller making it harder to fill. The big let down though was the new bar studs. The studs themselves are the same size, but they don't have an expanded dowel at the base to locate the bar. Because of this, the original bar no longer fits. You will discover this out on a site, when you needed the saw to do the job and you are hours drive from the dealer. I can't figure out if the new head should go with a new bar with a smaller slot or the studs need to have a spacer ring on them. There was no useful information in the box the head came in. At that point I figured I had nothing to lose so I attempted swapping the (very small, 1/4" or less?) bar studs with the older ones so I could get the job down and not pay my workers for nothing. Original head studs came out easy, but the new ones were loctited in well and truely and snapped when I tried to remove them. I took it back to the dealer who stripped it down so as not to cause heat damage to the plastic parts, then torched the studs to break the loctite, pulled the studs and swapped them with the ones on the old broken head at no charge.
I was kind of discouraged about taking detailed photos for all of this after seeing all the pics in the old threads gone
One thing worth mentioning with stihl, is that they have excellent 'version control'. They keep plenty of stock of spare parts, for years to come. If they do update the design of a part, service bulletins are released and they ensure it's backwards compatible. That's really important when you use your tools to get income. A plus to stihl there, and a minus to echo.
The echo pole saw is still a better pole saw overall than the still. The engines are about equal, the shaft on the echo is far superior to the stihl (definitely the stihl's weak point!) and will last a long time. The way the head is secured to the pole is another big letdown for stihl and echo is the clear winner there also. The pole saw head itself is a major letdown on the echo though. It's weak, flimsy and cheap looking. It's about the equivalent of heads you get on $200 chinese pole saws. On balance, I'm still voting for the echo. It's held up better than a stihl over the last 10 months, and I still feel confident I'll get years of use out of it. After a year, the pole on the stihl saws is often decidedly worse for wear. I'll just have to be more careful with the head in future, wish they'd spent a few more $ there
