For what its worth, a good running stock 390 or 661 is a damn nice saw even for the occasional user who likes bling and performance. My humble opinion is to just fix it so it runs really well when u need it with good new OEM parts. This from an ALMOST retired guy who spends hours and hours in the woods and raced a variety of types and classes of off road bikes from 1972 until 2001. You would think a person would learn...it took 29 years for me to figure things out relative to dirt bikes. One life altering event...then another and now I build my own saws for fun. Might be a path to consider if your a clutch head like me and liked to build your own race bikes. THEN after the 661 is "right" and has that "real" need properly covered, find another saw to make "more" right.....and another...then your hooked in the same way you probably were with the racing. Only saws are actually useful.
How's that for practical advice?
And.....just forget the "measuring stick" defined by all that cookie cutting. It means absolutely nothing when you are working by yourself with a crisp saw and a sharp chain. You won't care one bit if your saw cuts 2 seconds faster through a cant on some YouTube video. What you WILL care about is will it start easy, keep running, and run well when you need it too. That's it. The rest is bling. There may be no such thing as too much HP, but there is a concept of "enough" HP to get a long job done.
But then there is racing saws as well....another story completely. Sometime its a fair analogy to say running a peaky race saw build doing work is like running a peaky 250 in the woods....fun for about 15 minutes. BUT can be a blast at a GTG ... Yet Another story!
