Chris-PA
Where the Wild Things Are
One can just follow the directions, or one can try to learn about how things work and to understand the reasons behind why those directions were written, and then make one's own decisions. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches I guess.It's information like in this thread that gets me frustrated. Maybe it's my military background and doing what the manual says. If the manual says (recommends) to use a certain ratio (50:1) in both my Stihl and Echo tools, why wouldn't that be the proper amount? Same with the damn ethanol vs non-ethanol.
My truck (2010 Ram 1500) manual recommends 89 Octane with no more than 10% ethanol. So guess what? That's what I use!
Just change the damn manual for those of us who trust what the manual for a product recommends! Sheesh.
No doubt that Dodge has a knock sensor, which means that if you use 87 octane it will simple retard the spark if needed, which will only result in a small reduction in power.
50:1 is effective for most uses most of the time but provides little safety margin, but there are other reasons it is recommended. My Dad always mixes at 50:1 and has no issues so far. Since I know how poorly the carbs (non-AT/MT) control the mixture on these saws, and since I've noticed that some saw models that used to recommend 40:1 later changed to 50:1 with no changes to the design, I'm not comfortable at 50:1.