Duty life of chainsaws

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Service. After a couple dozen hours of use you want to give it a good clean/oil/adjust/tighten cycle beyond keeping good chain sharpness, tension, and a clean air filter . Plug is so cheap it doesn't pay not to change it annually. If you start to have mixture symptoms, address them promptly or risk burning out early.

I probably do that 20 operating hour "duty cycle" every year on my winter's wood, with fifteen years of the same on the old one before losing the magneto, ten on this Stihl so far.

Never heard of such a thing! I mean, I never looked that closely to the manual, etc. We have had 4 chain saws around here over the last 30 years. We heate our house with wood that we cut from 1972 till 1992 and heated our maple syrup evaporator with wood from 1994 to 2005. I never do anything to my saws until they need it, except that I always keep the chain REAL sharp and the depth gages set properly. Oh, yes, and I always top off the oil tank with every fill of gas. My main saw for a number of years was a Homelite 150. Must have put

200 or 300 hours on it, at least, before some roller bearings came out of the muffler one day. Did totally rebuild an McCuiioch 51 that I bought used and worn out in 1974 and still use it when I drop BIG trees. Ocassionally, if one doesn't start, it goes to the doctor. Bought a mid size Jonney to replace the 150 4 or 5 years ago and it hasn't had any service yet.

Pete Stanaitis

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T> I was cutting up a downed Norway Maple this weekend and happened to actually

For most products the duty cycle means that you can't run it continuously for that period so I would guess that you have to take a break every 50 yours or so ;-)

Most people don't put 50 hours on a saw in a year.

Brian

I wonder if what you saw was "duty cycle" or something about "rated life". Usually duty cycle is expressed as a percentage and is the amount of time that a device can spend at full power vs the amount of "rest time".For instance, the duty cycle of a heat gun may be 50%. It needs to rest and cool for the same amount of time that it was heated. Usually a duty cycle figure is accompanied by a suggested maximum use time before letting the tool rest.

"Life rating" on small gasoline motors used in Lawn and Garden equipment usually refers to the number of hours that the engine will run under normal use conditions before it no longer meets the emissions standards that it was certified for. I have yet to see the term "duty cycle" on this type of equipment, but I confess that I stopped looking a long time ago. The term I've seen is "Life" or "Life Rating" or "Life Cycle".

As far as I know this (above) is correct, but I open to being educated ....

cheers

And as a followup, this from the Echo-USA website :

"" * EDP is defined by CARB as "Emissions Durability Period". EPA uses the term "useful life", which is defined as "...when engine performance deteriorates to the point where usefulness and/or reliability is impacted to a degree sufficient to necessitate overhaul or replacement..." (U.S. Government, Code of Federal Regulations, Vol. 40, Chapter 1, Sec. 90.105, par. 5, §ii) ""

cheers

Thanks for the responses. A closer look at the tag on the chainsaw leads me to believe that oldrad is correct about it being an emissions life rating.