Piston Question

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I was looking for an 044 piston a few months back and noticed all of the ads for Meteor pistons on Ebay...shipping from China. They say in the ad that the rings are made in Italy but no mention of the piston.
 
No sir.
I know it’s not necessarily spec’d out that way, but I’m pretty certain that saw with that piston would run better if you carved windows in it. Or replaced it with one with windows already in it
I thought about that myself but whereas this a client's saw I decided not to experiment.....beyond this "experimental" piston...LOL!
 
I was looking for an 044 piston a few months back and noticed all of the ads for Meteor pistons on Ebay...shipping from China. They say in the ad that the rings are made in Italy but no mention of the piston.
I see what you mean......I did the same search on ebay just now and found pages of Meteor pistons for Stihl saws shipped free from China. Same thing I found on my piston... wristpin, retainers and ring was made in Italy but not the slug.....
 
I just bought and installed a meteor piston, described as manufactured in Italy, shipped from/to the UK. It seems fine and the saw works well, I am very happy with it.
 
I just bought and installed a meteor piston, described as manufactured in Italy, shipped from/to the UK. It seems fine and the saw works well, I am very happy with it.
Yes as said earlier the Italian made Meteor pistons have always been of great quality.....I have used dozens without complaint or any failures.....even on ones I alter for performance gains and higher than stock compression figures.

However the question remains......how do you tell, when buying sight unseen on the internet, if you are in fact getting a good quality Italian made piston or a smoke and mirrors far eastern made casting with Italian components (wristpin, clips and ring/s)??

Are the most common high sales pistons going to still be made in Italy and the lesser demand, lower sales pistons be farmed out to lesser quality foundries?? Surely would have been helpful if Meteor Italy could have furnished some clarification to my questions. The piston in this thread is clearly of inferior design to the original Gilardoni piston used in this application.
 
Yes, that's a difficult one. Even some OEM cylinders have no visible markings. I am based in the UK, I bought from a UK supplier trading via Ebay that I was able to contact beforehand to ask this question. I got comfortable that if there was any problem the item would be returned. The box the piston arrived in also seemed pretty genuine. Measure the bore, test the fit, check the transfers, compare to the original etc.
 
Gotta revisit this with somewhat of an update. The 268 is all rebuilt but not yet started. The client that was harping on me to get his saw done earlier showed up at the shop and said he had no funds to pay even the parts bill presently. So I saw no reason the fuel and oil the saw and get it running and tuned and just put it on the shelf. I may end up with it and if so will replace the 66 top end with an Mahle top end I have here to put it back to the XP it once was.
But I still do not fully understand Meteor situation. Or even if any pistons are currently being made in Italy or everything is farmed out to MP. If that is the case there may still be old stock still in the pipeline of Italian origin adding to my confusion.

I came across this add this morning for a rebuild kit for the 2171 etc. Packaged in the same box style as the piston I got, lacking the "Made in Italy" anywhere to be seen. If you zoom in on the bottom of the cyl you'll notice, cast into the bottom of the jug the MP logo in a square box (same as on the inside of my piston) followed by METEOR....

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3049351312...oxI8j9xqgmzbo0Ky36TvPRltsk|tkp:Bk9SR9iP-86CYg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top