Huztl farmertec p&c kit pics/review/build/etc ms440

[alabama xl]

I got some parts in the mail that I was missing, bar, chains, chain tensioner. The Huztl chain tensioner was garbage. I've seen things made by hand on a dirt floor in the pakastani mountains that were better machined than this. The inside surface of the big gear was so badly galled, that it would destroy the post in the saw case if you were to use it for long. and the gears were cut so badly that it wouldn't work in both directions. bits of metal were shaving off of the gears as I tried to run it back and forth. the bearing end of the adjuster screw that beds in the case of the saw was so rough it was also going to wallow out the saw from very minimal usage. I went to the local dealer and got the right parts, but he sold me the wrong piece that goes on the screw and runs back and forth to actually move the bar. I ended up using that huztl piece for now until the dealer can get me the right part on weds, but it was also poorly made. long story short, don't buy any complex parts from huztl unless you don't mind if they fail to function as promised.

I got a 28" bar from them but it was also not without problems. If you look in picture number 1 here, you might be able to see that the bar was put together slightly off. The two halves are slightly out of alignment. with the right side being taller than the left. You can see in the second image where I took it to the belt sander and worked it over, that one side is bare metal after a little sanding, and the other still has paint on it. This cleaned up well enough, and I did final touch up with a good file to smooth it out the rest of the way. The "replaceable" bar nose was a bit smaller than the rest of the bar, so I helped it out a bit too. the nose was also installed in such a way that it was very slightly crooked on one side. maybe not enough to notice in service, but I beat on it with a hammer enough to bring it back closer to where it should be. The sprocket has a little play in it, but it does spin properly. it's been a while since I handled a new high quality bar, so I'm not sure how much this should move side to side perpendicular to the bearing axis.

Otherwise the bar was straight and true. It cleaned up well enough for me. They say "Holzforma - for the working man", but it should really read "for the man who likes to work on his equipment before being able to use it".

 

[alabama xl]

This pine tree on the ground for a year now wouldn't be a huge challenge for any saw, but I was impressed with the fact that the huztl brand chain that cost under $8 was able to make chips this good with no sharpening out of the box. It could probably use the depth guages taken down a bit. I've got a friend with a very large oak on the ground that we were going to try to slab into boards at some point, and will hopefully be able to get some video of the saw running in it. I've never used a saw this big before, so don't have much to compare it with. even with the cheesy chinese cylinder and chain, it certainly impressed. I doubt I would have been happy if I hadn't taken the time to clean up the port openings on the cylinder, measure squish, eliminate base gasket, and make the bar right. If I were making my living with this, I would have just bought the good stuff from the dealer new, but I mostly do climbing and trimming with my friend who does this professionally so that we can help out friends and neighbors, so tinkering with things to get them to work right worked out for me. At some point after I've used it enough to get a good feel for it, I'll pull the cylinder off of this and try out one of the other ones that I got with the bigger bore, but in the mean time, I'm happy to have a working saw that is big enough for the occasional felling job we encounter.