High speed mixture on 346xp

[marsingbob]

I have a 346xp ne I bought from Neal Murphy here on this site several years ago. He no longer appears here. It has been a great saw and for years I left the mixture settings alone, but it clearly was very rich and needed adjustment. Neal told me he acquired surplus saws from a utility company, rebuilt them with Meteor pistons and tuned them. I know he opened up the muffler and I believe he raised the compression. It does not have limiter caps on the carburetor adjustment screws. I do not know if he retained or replaced the rev limiter coil. How can I tell? I leaned it up and it still seems to stutter or four stroke, but I do not know if it is the coil or not. I bought a tach and leaned it till it was at 13000 rpm. It still seemed to stutter or four stroke. I backed it off a little and am now running it at 12600. I found a 2010 thread on the subject and the general opinion was that something in the range of 13500 or 14000 was safe and would give the best performance, but that was for saws with unlimited coils and at least some contributors were talking about ported saws. I would appreciate your opinions and suggestions on whether I should be ok at 12600 and whether I can safely go higher.

Am I correct in my understanding that the danger of a rev limiter coil is that a saw can be tuned very lean and the rev limiter coil gives a false reading that the saw is four stroking and therefore safe to run?

 

[Andyshine77]

The limited coil is set to kick in at 14,100 rpm so you're very safe at 13,000 and to be honest the saw will likely want to run at closer to that 14,000 mark. So if its still four strokeing heavily at 13,000 you can lean it out, either till it four strokes lightly, or starts to approach 14,000rpm say 13,800.

 

[Ryan'smilling]

I'd definitely lean it out a little more. If you're using a tach, you'll know when you hit the limiter because the rpm number will start bouncing all over the map. For my use, I'd set it right at the limiter or a few hundred under it for limbing, and maybe richen it up to 13,000 or a little higher for longer bucking cuts.

 

[old guy]

Limited coils are blue in color, unlimited are black.

 

[sunfish]

13000 is too low for a 346, too rich.

 

[marsingbob]

Thanks to all of you for your very helpful replies. I pulled the starter cover and it is a black coil (dated 2007) so it is unlimited. I did not have a chance to clean the air filter and warm it up, but I will do so tomorrow and increase the rpm. I will let you all know how it goes. I cut a lot of 12" to 16" softwood, so I will be conservative.