Not pretty, but won't affect performance. I can almost guarantee that it will break off if you try to straighten it.
Huztl farmertec p&c kit pics/review/build/etc ms440
- Thread starter alabama xl
- Start date
Help Support Arborist Forum:
I have used HL sets, they are actually a good bit better, some could just be bolted on and go but lacks performance but will work, others needed some bit of fixing up to even risk putting them in a saw. I never use the circlips sent with the kits yet and have been lucky enough that the OEM piston pins and circlips would work with the AM sets. Each set needs to be checked closely for pin fit and circlip fit, some sets will not work with OEM parts, piston rings are another item unless they are known to be Caber brand, otherwise I use OEM if the fit is correct.
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
Ya, you get what you pay for... , and I knew what I was buying. I'm waiting to see if they are going to send me a new part, or if they will refund the cost of it. Not holding my breath on either, but if they don't come through, that's what filing a dispute with your CC company is good for. The message to them is marked read, and they have replied to me before, so if I don't hear from them in a week, I will probably be talking to AMEX. There is some more sadness with the other kits, that I will get into when I'm done with this one. 1 out of 4 that looks somewhat usable out of the box with no mods is not good numbers at any price point.
Are we starting to realise why Mahle, Gillardoni & Kolbenschmidt cylinder kits retail for 10X-20X even 30X the price of these Chinese copies. I am all for folks buying these and having some fun with them porting & building but don't act like the sky is falling when you discover differences in quality. For $12 what do folks honestly expect........a quality controlled products that's 3% of the real deal cost?
Well for one, my opinion only, I prefer OEM mechanical parts even for my own personal saws and try to tell customers the differences between AM and OEM. Many paying customers are cheap, they only want a running saw at the most reasonable/ lowest price possible. Even after discussing the pros and cons and they know the likely hood that the AM parts will not be top performance or last like OEM they still want to go the lower price route.
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
I don't think the sky is falling, and I knew what I was buying. I'm documenting so that others can make an informed decision rather than rely on some folks saying the chinese stuff is awesome, while others say it's all crap. Here we will hopefully get a slightly better picture of what parts of these P&C kits are actually ok, and what aspects are crap and unusable.
I was mostly interested in looking at how the port placement and sizing changes as the cylinders get bigger in the big bore kits, and whether they even bothered adjusting any of this stuff, or simply made a bigger cylinder with the same port sizes and locations. I don't have hundreds of dollars to blow on my curiosity at the moment, so I decided to start super cheap, knowing also in the end amongst all of the junk, that I would probably have enough functioning parts to put my free saw back together and cut some wood with it, all for less than the cost of a "high quality" aftermarket kit.
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
There are certain things that to me don't seem worth buying cheapie chinese aftermarket: bearings, seals, fuel lines, etc. Things that are critical to the saw functioning without self destructing, that are more than likely going to be substandard parts in some way or another - fuel lines and rubber parts that become soft and leak, or brittle in the cold; seals that won't hold up over time, parts that will destroy other more expensive parts when they fail. Happy to buy OEM whenever its affordable, but many times it's simply not worth it to put a dead saw back into service when the parts are so expensive, and the cheapie parts can give an old saw a second or third or fourth lease on life.
Think of the electrical and plumbing parts made in China in your home the next time you are away on a 3 day weekend.
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
You would be surprised and shocked at what is actually made in China. Bunch of Stihl is made there. Its just the times we are in manufacturing left us. I bought a cross cylinder for my last kit thinking I will get a better coating and the geometry on the cylinder was so bad it about tore it up. I put the farmertec back on it just in time
BIG difference. It's manufactured to Stihl's expectations and QC, not some thief of a counterfeiter.
ratman36
ArboristSite Operative
Last 440 kit i build went off without a hitch except it kept dying right after start up. After night sleep and some thought I tested tank vent and replaced with OEM and bam runs perfect.
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
So I've got some rudimentary cylinder maps. Its hard to get the actual port opening and not the chamfered area, but that shows up in a few spots. I have the OEM Gillardoni 50MM cylinder, and the Huztl MS440 50MM cylinder done so far. I also made an overlay showing the two in different colors. other than cleaning up the rough edges and removing any flashing left over from casting, is there anything I should do to improve the shape, and maybe get a little more power out of the huztl cylinder?
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
placement does not seem terrible, but the chamfering is pretty sad looking in comparison, and overall shape not as refined on the Huztl
They look like they were cut on the same machine, just finished differently.
http://thechainsawkitguy.com Kit info
http://thechainsawkitguy.com Kit info
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
They don't "cut them" on a machine, port holes are as cast. They are just cast somewhat more poorly than OEM, and then said casting is finished more poorly than OEM.
Any thoughts anyone has about raising, lowering, widening, and/or re-profiling for better power/handling?
Any thoughts anyone has about raising, lowering, widening, and/or re-profiling for better power/handling?
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
well, I finished cleaning up the huztl 50MM cylinder. I did some minor adjustments to shape of intake and exhaust to make sure there were no points to snag, and cleaned up the the spot in the intake that was restricted due to a casting defect. Whatever that was, it was tough as nails, and wouldn't come off with a rasp, so I had to resort to dremel with flex shaft to break through the suraface and clean most of it up. The plating seemed plenty tough too.
I had initially measured the depth of the new cylinder using my digital caliper, and found it to be slightly deeper from the base to the squish band than on the OEM cylinder. So have decided to go with no base gasket. I just did the solder trick, and it measures .020, so I think I'm good with a bit of silicone gasket maker material on the bottom of the cylinder. Any favorites that people have for this job? pulling over the cylinder, I get noticable compression with just my fingers covering the spark plug and decompression release holes. Hopefully I can find my compression gauge after I've got the cylinder bolted in place properly with a bit of gasket maker in there.
I had initially measured the depth of the new cylinder using my digital caliper, and found it to be slightly deeper from the base to the squish band than on the OEM cylinder. So have decided to go with no base gasket. I just did the solder trick, and it measures .020, so I think I'm good with a bit of silicone gasket maker material on the bottom of the cylinder. Any favorites that people have for this job? pulling over the cylinder, I get noticable compression with just my fingers covering the spark plug and decompression release holes. Hopefully I can find my compression gauge after I've got the cylinder bolted in place properly with a bit of gasket maker in there.
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
So here are rudimentary cylinder maps comparing the huztl ms440 52MM big bore with the ms460 52mm standard bore, followed by comparison of their ms460 52mm and 54mm cylinders. I've still got some issues getting a good mark where the actual port opening is vs the chamfered edge on these. It's difficult to get a mark since they did such a poor job chamfering these edges, but the gist of it is there to see. the couple of extra lines inside of the openings are likely where the actual port opening is.
It appears to me that they simply used the MS440 port openings and bored the cylinder out larger, and for the ms460 they did the same, as the port sizes are close to the same for the same model saw. If looking to get a big bore kit from these guys, you're going to need to do a bunch of cleanup, and also a port job to get ideal opening sizes for the increased displacement. Or get the ms460 cylinder and make it fit your ms440.
I'd be really curious to know if the more expensive big bore P&C kits use the same port sizing as the standard bore cylinders, or if they took the time to optimize their port sizing to the bigger bore, but I'm not curious enough to spend the $$ right now to find out. I need to cut some wood sooner than later with this thing, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up ASAP, cross fingers, say a little prayer, and hope that this thing will get enough power to pull the chain I want it to pull.
It appears to me that they simply used the MS440 port openings and bored the cylinder out larger, and for the ms460 they did the same, as the port sizes are close to the same for the same model saw. If looking to get a big bore kit from these guys, you're going to need to do a bunch of cleanup, and also a port job to get ideal opening sizes for the increased displacement. Or get the ms460 cylinder and make it fit your ms440.
I'd be really curious to know if the more expensive big bore P&C kits use the same port sizing as the standard bore cylinders, or if they took the time to optimize their port sizing to the bigger bore, but I'm not curious enough to spend the $$ right now to find out. I need to cut some wood sooner than later with this thing, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up ASAP, cross fingers, say a little prayer, and hope that this thing will get enough power to pull the chain I want it to pull.
alabama xl
ArboristSite Operative
I finally made time to bolt the cleaned up cylinder on and get the saw fired up. I ended up putting it on with no gasket and a thin layer of permatex “hylomar blue” equivalent to make sure I got a good seal. Not sure if I was doing something wrong, or maybe the mating surfaces weren’t clean enough, but that stuff was a bear to keep spread out where I put it. It kept beading up as the solvent evaporated. I bolted the huztl cylinder down after making sure that I wasn’t going to squish a bunch of sealer into the guts of the saw.
Three good pulls with compression tester hooked up showed a little over 150 psi. I should probably re-check the directions on my tester, as my neighbor was telling me 5 pulls would give a better reading.
After putting everything else back together, including clean carb with fresh diaphragm and seals, I cranked the mixture screws out 1 turn each, and gassed up the saw. Bringing great joy to me, it fired up after just a few pulls. 1 turn each is a lot more than indicated on the saw cover (showing 1/4 and 3/4 turns). Saw ran very rich to the point where there was liquid coming out of the muffler port, but it sounded happy enough, and easily revved to 12,000 rpm. Not knowing much about break in for this, I only ran it for long enough to be sure it was going to run. I’ll have to read up on break in before I do much more.
Next step is to get a few missing parts I forgot to buy with everything else (chain tensioner and some screws for the cover, get a new chain, tune it up, and cut some wood! I unfortunately don’t have an original saw to compare it to, but it certainly felt much more eager to work than my little husky 435. Time will tell how it holds up, but I do have some extra cylinders and pistons to try out down the line. If I had the money, I’d probably have bought higher quality OEM cylinder to replace the one I had with the bad spark plug hole, but as it was, I’m not sad about the cost to fix the saw with the farmer tec one. Their rings and pistons looked sketchier than the OEM one I had, so might look elsewhere if those were parts I were replacing.
Your mileage may vary, but the bottom line is that even the cheapest of the cheap Chinese knockoff parts will make the saw run again. Maybe I got lucky?
Three good pulls with compression tester hooked up showed a little over 150 psi. I should probably re-check the directions on my tester, as my neighbor was telling me 5 pulls would give a better reading.
After putting everything else back together, including clean carb with fresh diaphragm and seals, I cranked the mixture screws out 1 turn each, and gassed up the saw. Bringing great joy to me, it fired up after just a few pulls. 1 turn each is a lot more than indicated on the saw cover (showing 1/4 and 3/4 turns). Saw ran very rich to the point where there was liquid coming out of the muffler port, but it sounded happy enough, and easily revved to 12,000 rpm. Not knowing much about break in for this, I only ran it for long enough to be sure it was going to run. I’ll have to read up on break in before I do much more.
Next step is to get a few missing parts I forgot to buy with everything else (chain tensioner and some screws for the cover, get a new chain, tune it up, and cut some wood! I unfortunately don’t have an original saw to compare it to, but it certainly felt much more eager to work than my little husky 435. Time will tell how it holds up, but I do have some extra cylinders and pistons to try out down the line. If I had the money, I’d probably have bought higher quality OEM cylinder to replace the one I had with the bad spark plug hole, but as it was, I’m not sad about the cost to fix the saw with the farmer tec one. Their rings and pistons looked sketchier than the OEM one I had, so might look elsewhere if those were parts I were replacing.
Your mileage may vary, but the bottom line is that even the cheapest of the cheap Chinese knockoff parts will make the saw run again. Maybe I got lucky?
