Hey hold on a minute now, regarding that pic with the Stihl, that's no ordinary Stihl. That's "Christine", and she has quite the attitude. And the fact that I knew there was gonna be a pic posted is why I'm grinning there. Although, just running that saw is enough to put a grin on anybody.
OK, the carb is in the 550. She's sounding a lot different and I THINK we got her. Can't take it out back to the woods at the moment and play, but 2 issues are gone. One, the primer fills and firms up like it's supposed to, and the idle is perfect. Acceleration is right there as well. Need to put some time on it first to be sure it's 100%. Since it's already the end of the week, I'll run a tank or two through it over the weekend and send it home to Brad on Monday.
I didn't go the wimp out route of moving the original AT unit over to the new carb. Going to have to know how to do the software download routine, so I hooked it up and did it the right way. I don't know if there's any changes to it yet, but that insures that Brad will have the latest software. Really not that hard to do. And the best part is that you don't have to have the carb in the saw to load the software. Just have to go to the Husky site and download the current software and save the file. Then using the DT, you click on "software update" and download the file to the carb. All of the Husky stuff worked fine. My only problem was finding where the heck the file went to on my computer. Getting the carb in and out of the 550 is no harder than with any of the new saws. Just have a couple of extra wires to plug in. The DT also asked that both the product code and serial number be entered, which I did. I don't know what would have happened if I left that out, but the carb, AT module and coil all have to be in sync.
But, while this is easy for me to do, it's obviously going to be a problem for anyone who's not a Husky dealer and doesn't have access to the software or a diagnostic tool. That does make it a competitive advantage for guys like me and TK, since half the dealer base will take a while to figure this stuff out. And a fair amount of the other half are probably never going to figure it out. (I have about 50 346's in stock for the faint-of-heart. :msp_wink
It will help separate the better dealers from the clowns. But, while this might be good for me, it's going to leave a lot of very capable do-it-yourself guys out in the cold if you don't have a competent dealer who can program a carb for you. And let's not forget that there will still be carb failures due to all of the usual reasons, like having the thing sit with water or something in it for 5 months. And you won't be able to put a carb on it without first programing it.
I gotta close up and get out of here. I'll check in with you guys later.
