Well I think I’m back to where I started. Got the saw all cleaned up, bar rails filed, chain sharpened yesterday. Made it out about 4 pm today with a plan to do some test cuts and tune.
It started easy, idled well, and cut very strong in some 18” hickory that’s been down a year. I was fiddling a lot with the low jet trying to get it just right. I’d occasionally kill it, but I could always go back to “home” setting of 1 1/4 turns and it’d fire right up and run.
After about 15-20 mins it started doing this thing where it’d stall after a cut, immediately once the rpms came down. It was too dark to see the screws anymore so I took it back to the garage. It got real hard to restart, so I pulled the air filter and saw a good puddle in the airbox again.
Looks like I’m gonna have to check out those reed valves after all. Anyway, I’m not super discouraged. The saw cut very, very well when it ran so at least I know there’s a good platform to work with.