MS250 bar and oiling issues

[junkyard]

New here first post, I found this site looking for info on this problem.

Over the summer I bought a new in the box MS250 to keep as a back up saw around the house. It came with an 16" bar and runs .325 chain. I've run the saw before but only to try it out. I had bought it at a going out of business sale.
Yesterday I got it out to cut up some downed maple tree branches from a recent storm and to cut some 8x8" pressure treated wood I bought to use as edging along one garden here.
The saw did fine cutting up the small stuff but when I went to cut the 8x8's it struggled bad, I got lots of bar smoke, and it turned the bar edges blue, fast.
The saw is new, its full of Stihl Platinum bar lube. I can see oil slinging off the chain, and the chain is noticeably sticky with oil. The chain is properly adjusted, not too tight. Its throwing good size chips, so its not dull, and it does cut the wood, but its slow. I have to push hard to progress through the wood. (It ripped through the 4" downed limbs with ease). Frustrated, I got out my cheap Remington electric saw and finished the job. It ripped through the timbers like butter. I took the saw over to a local saw shop, the guy looked at it and said the bar didn't look like its was getting oiled. He took off the bar, ran it with the bar off and oil ran from the oil passage just fine. I bought a new bar and chain, which he put on and adjusted. And I
went home to give it a try, again, it struggled to cut the pressure treated 8x8's and quickly started to heat up the bar. I went out back and took the saw to some larger oak limbs and it cut but it struggled badly and heated up the bar discoloring the paint pretty quickly.
The bar is slinging oil, the chain is brand new, yet it has trouble cutting an 8" piece of pine.
Its not the wood, the electric saw proved that.

The saw doesn't bog or seem to be straining to cut, the bar just gets hot fast and smokes. I can smell the sharp smell of oil burning real quick. The bar is too hot to touch almost right away.
The chain moves freely in the bar, I can pull it around by hand with little resistance, so its not a matter of it being tight in the bar. The chain is .325- x .063 Stihl Oilmatic chain, p/n 3639 005 0062, and the bar is marked 3005-000-4713 and is marked on the side for this chain. Both are the same as what came on the saw new.

I realize this is only a homeowner saw but I can't imagine it not being able to make a couple cuts in 8" wood without overheating the bar.
At first I just thought the smoke was the oil burning or paint wearing off but it went from smoke to no paint and a blue bar in 2" of cutting. I wasn't putting a lot of pressure on it either, but I did have to push down a bit to make it cut. The chips were just that, big chips about 3/16" in size or so.

The bar doesn't seem to make heat when just free running and not cutting, but as soon as it hits the wood it starts heating up and smoking. I even tried dumping more oil on it but that must made more smoke.

And yes, the chain is on in the right direction.

I took a straight edge and laid it across all the cutters and there's about 1/16" or so between the straight edge and the rakers.

The chain is obviously oil covered, but the bar seems dry.
The oil holes are clear in the bar as well.

The chain is the same type as what is on my neighbor's MS290, which I borrowed for comparison.
The MS290 cut through the 8x8's like butter. The chain looks identical, the bar measures the same width and such.
Its as if the oil isn't getting into the rail of the bar, only on the outside of the chain?
I can't see how its possible for the chain to be so wet with oil and the rail is still dry and 'dusty' with fine powder like metal dust.
With as much oil as is on the chain, and the fact that the oil does go down in the tank, there's no doubt its pumping oil, and I watched it run out the oil slot when the bar and chain were off. It didn't spray or squire out, but it certainly was moving oil out at what I'd say would be enough to lube the bar. I can also see oil slinging off the chain at times. The chain is wearing into the bar laterally, not side to side, its wallowing out the groove. In less than 3 minutes of use it's turned the paint on the bar to a burnt amber color and left dark blue discoloration all along the sides near the chain.

So far its cooked two $65 bars. It don't seem to be damaging the chain, its not discolored and even the first chain is still very sharp to the touch.

Any ideas?

 

[farmer steve]

Welcome to AS @junkyard. The only thing I can think of is a to tight chain. You also say you had to push down on the saw to get it to cut which sounds like a slightly dull chain.

 

[Gypo Logger]

Sounds strange, the bar is bent or it’s miss matched bar and chain pitch, gauge or sprocket.

 

[pioneerguy600]

The common denominator, stop cutting pressure treated or creosote treated wood.

 

[ericm979]

It shouldn't happen on a new saw but the holes in the bar that deliver oil into the slot can get clogged. Use wire to make sure they are open. You should be able to stick a fine wire in from the slot and see it in the hole where the oil feeds in.

Also check that the bar is the right one and the oil feed hole in the bar lines up with the feed slot in the saw case.

You can try running the saw with the bar on and chain off to see if oil comes out the bar. Don't rev the piss out of it, just throttle it up a little so the clutch is turning.

 

[junkyard]

This is a new saw, with less than 20 minutes of run time on it. The first bar came with the saw, the second bar was identical and put on by a local Stihl dealer here. The oil hole bleeds oil when it runs above idle. It doesn't spray the oil out, it just sort of runs out steady.
The bar holes are clear, I can put a piece of wire through the hole.

I was simply trying to cut a couple of 8x8" timbers to edge a garden area. I'm not using it day in and day out to cut PT wood. I can't see how or why a couple quick cuts in PT wood would destroy a brand new bar and chain in seconds.

The bar is not bent, the bar on it now is three days old, its only run maybe 5 minutes at best.
There's no doubt its getting oil through the holes, the chain is soaked with oil on the outside and its slinging oil all over the place when I crack open the throttle. I can see it coming off the chain. The oil is not getting into or traveling along the groove though.
On my cheap little electric saw, the oil seems to saturated the chain, the bar, and the sprockets, so much so it collects dust everywhere the oil goes.
On this 250, the chain looks clean, the oil seems to be slinging off it keeping it clean. there's little to no oil build up under the clutch cover except at the very rear, where its slinging off the chain and dripping.
I took the new chain off and its sticky with oil, and completely clean of sawdust. There is zero oil in the groove though. If I manually squirt oil into the groove, assemble the thing and try cutting, it burns off the oil in the slot and I get smoke.
The chain fits normal in the groove, the bar calls for .063 pitch, the chain matches the bar. I listed the part numbers above. The dealer looked up the numbers himself thinking that maybe it had the wrong chain or bar on it, but the new bar and chain were identical to the original.

Its not the wood I'm cutting, my $30 electric chain saw cuts it like butter. I was just trying to avoid taking apart the pole saw and running a 100ft extension cord out to where I was working. AND, my neighbors MS290, with same gauge and pitch chain cut the scrap pieces just fine.

The dealer here says the saw was made in 2014, I bought it in 2017.

If there was anything wrong with the first bar and chain, that should have been fixed with the brand new bar and chain. All parts are Stihl from a Stihl dealer. (The dealer/shop where I bought it is gone, the owner retired and sold the place a couple of years ago and moved away, he ran a shop behind his house for years selling mostly to landscape guys and local firewood guys).

What gets me is that this thing heats up FAST, I've run out of oil and finished a cut before on my old Homelite XL and it never turned the bar blue like this. That saw used a thumb plunger to pump oil, it didn't take much oil either. That saw was handed down to me by my dad 30 years ago, its got its original bar and possibly the original chain, and its never turned its bar blue or made smoke like this MS250 does.

The dealer says he'd like to replace the pump just to see if it helps, but he doesn't sound confident. He told me if it works, I pay, if it don't he won't charge me. I think its got him puzzled as well.

Another point I keep looking at is that it cuts small stuff fine, its when I try to cut more than say a 3" or 4" branch it has trouble.
The chain is new, and sharp enough to make chips not sawdust when cutting the limbs, but in the soft wood it almost doesn't cut at all.

Something I did notice in the cuts it made in the larger timbers is that there are burn marks on the end of the wood where the ms250 did cut, as if the kerf was too narrow and the saw was binding. In the small round branches it doesn't matter because as the saw cuts the branch is falling away. That doesn't happen with the 8x8" timbers.
Its not like I'm cutting old railroad ties either, these are clean new 8x8" x12' long pieces of wood from Home Depot.
I could see if I were trying to cut 36" rounds of oak or something but this is soft wood only 8" across. That should not be out of the realm of a 16" chainsaw. Especially since the cheap Chinese Remingtion 10" electric pole saw head will cut it just fine.
It seems to be an issue with the bar or chain. The electric saw has a manual oiler, and it doesn't come close to putting out nearly as much oil as the Stihl does, yet it doesn't even make the bar warm making the same cuts.

For some reason the chain is digging into the bar, the face of the groove is being ripped into fast. A close look shows it all galled up yet the chain looks fine. Again, it don't get hot running unloaded, only when I try to cut. Its also getting torn up on the top and bottom, not just where the cutting pressure is. I really figured the new bar and chain would have fixed it since it was obvious it was getting oil from the oil port.

 

[farmer steve]

Check the sprocket size to make sure it matches the chain size.

 

[HarleyT]

Put up a pic of that sprocket.

 

[pioneerguy600]

Put up a pic of that sprocket.

I would rather see the chain, especially the cutters and depth guides, the sprocket is your thing!

 

[HarleyT]

I would rather see the chain, especially the cutters and depth guides, the sprocket is your thing!

Predilection....

 

[junkyard]

I tried something today, I bolted the bar on the saw without the chain or outer cover using a couple of spacers.
No oil comes out into the bar groove with the bar in place, but it does ooze out above the bar a bit and I get some coming out of the bottom of the saw through one of the holes.
The hole in the bar doesn't seem like it ever lines up with the slot where the oil comes out? The hole is too close to the edge of the bar.
The bar and chain are factory part numbers for the saw.

With the bar off, the saw pushes oil out fine, with the bar on, I see only a little bit coming out around the edges behind the bar. The hole is open to the chain groove, the bar is spot clean.
I also noticed that it started to melt the outer cover a bit during the last run.
The sprocket looks ok, there's some marks forming in the teeth.

Here's a pic of the first bar, chain and sprocket. The sprocket is marked .325 right on it. So is the bar and the box the new chain came out of.

 

[HarleyT]

The bottom side of that chain looks pretty rough. Has it ever jumped off?
Can you take a pic of the label on the bar?

That bar is 3 days old????

 

[pioneerguy600]

Mine look more like that after 3 years.

 

[junkyard]

That bar is the original bar, it has less than 15mins or so of run time. The first time I run the saw I cut up some down branches, nothing bigger than 3" or 4" or so. It did that fine, the minute I tried to cut the 8x8" beam with it it got so hot the paint bubbled up and the steel turned blue.
My first attempt to see what was up was to clean up the bar, which had burrs all along both rails with curly bits turning away from the chain, and the paint was mostly burnt off and blistered up, so I did sand it somewhat smooth. I took a file and dressed the edges to get rid of all the sharp burrs, and sanded it smooth a bit. I sharpened the chain, and knocked down the rakers using an Oregon guide and file set.
I later knocked the rakers down some more.
The label on the bar is barely readable due to burnt paint but here's a pic.


The chain is .325- x .063 Stihl Oilmatic chain, p/n 3639 005 0062
The bar is marked 3005-000-4713

Something I notice is that the area behind the clutch is more soaked with oil and any other place. Its already discoloring the plastic in there.

If I take a blow gun and blow backward from the oil groove behind the bar, it goes no where, I don't get air out of the other end of the hose at the tank. If I pull the oil pump out, I get air from one oil port that goes to the pump. If I remove the oil filter, and blow air back, I get air out of the other oil hole.
The pump is new, and I've now got four of them here.
There is a definite misalignment of the oil slot in the saw and the bar. They two holes miss by only a slight bit but they do miss. I was thinking of chamfering the hole in the bar just a bit toward the middle of the bar to give the oil a 'path' to the chain. Its as if the holes in the bar are too close to the edge of the bar.

Most likely the first two bars are cooked, they are both almost completely without paint and have lost a lot of metal. I can dress the edges on a belt sander and make them square and smooth but they've already turned blue. I actually get sparks off the bar and chain when I'm trying to cut with it.
The plastic bar cover also has a spot that's burnt black right where the clutch is and the front edges are melted a bit.

I should say that I'm not a total newbie to chainsaws, but I'm certainly not a saw tech nor do I work with saws very often, I do know how to tighten and sharpen a chain.
I can't tell how the oil is getting behind the clutch, I'm not sure if its just running out the back behind the bar into there, or if its blowing past the pump somehow.

I really like how the MS250 feels in hand, even if its a bit hard to start due to the high compression, but I'm really not liking all this plastic. It looks like most of the saw is all plastic. I'm getting real close here to just popping the bar back on it with a fresh shot of paint on it and dumping this thing.
The pump looks like a joke, after having this thing apart like this I don't see this lasting very long if I had to really cut a lot of wood.
I'm not sure if I wouldn't have been better off just buying a cheap saw and tossing it when it gave me trouble.

 

[junkyard]

I should also say, that when I say it gets hot, and smokes when I put a load on it, the load only needs to be the weight of the saw, I'm not standing on it or anything. I can run the saw wide open with a new bar, chain, and sprocket and its fine till I make contact with anything wider than a few inches across.
The thing smokes, makes sparks, and curly bits melting away where the chain touches the bar with red hot embers of melted steel shavings flying off as sparks. The chain doesn't seem to be showing any burn or wear, just the bar. The chain isn't even all that warm compared to the bar.

I can run the saw unloaded as long as I want and the bar doesn't get anything more than a bit warm at best. The instant it hits wood, its a problem.
I almost can't believe how fast is gets hot. Its cutting, and throwing chips but not big chips when the wood is thicker, it throws big chips on smaller, harder wood. One thing I did notice on each of the chains, each chain has one larger cutter? All are the same length but one, which is nearly double the length of the rest?
I do notice the chain drive links getting beat up a bit on the back or driven side, as if they were ground on with a stone.

I think the oil I'm seeing being slung back is off the sprocket or drum, some times I see it dripping off the back of the inside of the cover.
The chain is getting oil only after oil that's been slung under the cover falls back down on the chain.

It never leaks oil when it sits.
It empties the oil tank pretty fast, I cut up maybe a small pickup bed full of down limbs and it used up the whole tank and half of the second one now.
Figure maybe four trash cans full of small cut wood so far. Most of which was Norway maple and Sycamore.

 

[bubbajunk]

I have two MS250 saws here right now, both have oiling issues.
One oils only slightly, the other not at all. I just checked them both with the bar off, and both pump oil. I found the same thing, the hole in the bar is too high. I took a drill and made the hole sort of oblong by drilling downward on each bar hole at about 45°. On the one that wasn't completely blocked, it would do ok on light or small cuts, but if it was being used on a bigger piece of wood it smoked the bar pretty quick.
Both of mine have original bars, the saws look mint, the bars are all but bare metal. I didn't buy either one new, both were inherited along with a bunch of other saws but these were the newest of the lot.
The one with the worst oiling was the one with the 16" bar, the other has an 18" Stihl bar.

I'm also not a fan of the all plastic design, the entire engine housing on these is plastic.
Both of mine have a lot of oil inside the clutch drum, so much so that it looks burnt from all the oil that's cooked off the clutch.

 

[farmer steve]

The bottom side of that chain looks pretty rough. Has it ever jumped off?
Can you take a pic of the label on the bar?

That bar is 3 days old????

Mine look more like that after 3 years.

I thought /wondered the same.
I guess i'll ask the dreaded question. What kind of bar oil are you running @bubbajunk ?

 

[rupedoggy]

GET THOSE HOLES LINED UP! File the bar rails down and go to cutting.

 

[junkyard]

The bottom side of that chain looks pretty rough. Has it ever jumped off?
Can you take a pic of the label on the bar?

That bar is 3 days old????

I went an got another bar and chain today, plus another sprocket.
I oiled up the bar groove by hand before even putting the chain on it.
The dealer said he's never had to mess with the oil holes in the bar, so I left it alone for now.
I put the new sprocket, bar and chain on, all well oiled from the start. I started the saw up and tried to watch what was going on while it ran.
The first thing I noticed is that its making a pile of metal shavings right below the sprocket as it runs. After three or four revs, maybe 15 sec. of run time its already putting those marks in the back of the drive links and the chain is 'digging' into the sprocket teeth. The new sprocket teeth were totally smooth, and after only a short bit of running, with no load, the teeth have a noticeable pattern on them I can feel with my finger nails.
If I run the saw, shut it off, pull the side cover off, the sprocket is too hot to touch, (hot enough to blister skin). Its getting so hot its melting the side cover and turning the inside brown. After it cooled down, I removed the sprocket and checked the bearing and that all looks fine, its not blue or damaged at all.
The clutch drum is not showing any signs of slipping, there's no pattern on the inside andthe brake band is not dragging. (I even tried running it with the band removed and it made no difference. If I run the saw with no chain, the sprocket are doesn't get hot.
The thing that gets me is that it gets this hot fast, almost instantly.
I would think that if there was this much friction there the thing wouldn't even idle, but it runs fine. The chain never stops nor can I make it stop while cutting. I even went back to the part diagram to make sure nothing is missing in there.
Here's a pic of the inside of the cover, the brown spot is where the plastic has burned right near the sprocket. The whole cover is getting hot, its melted a bit away at the rear and the area where the bar clamps has an indent from where the bar burned into it.

The saw is not new, it was bought four or five years ago, but it sat unused until a few weeks ago, I got it out, gased and oiled it up and went to cutting the downed tree branches in the back yard. It seemed to do that fine, but when I went to cut the 8" PT beams it wouldn't cut. The issue is getting worse.

As to the oil hole alignment, I'm thinking that maybe the plastic has distorted enough to create this problem, when I look at this on new saw at the store the holes are aligned about half way, more than enough to let oil flow.

The chain is not dragging, its not pinched, with the bar on and everything tight and adjusted I can rotate the chain by hand freely by hand.

 

[rupedoggy]

The dealer said he's never had to mess with the oil holes in the bar, so I left it alone for now.

I'm done