Old timer needs to replace old timer with what?

[man1nvan]

 i cant believe how cheap bits are.   i have fins missing (from the tractor incident) so may well replace the whole lot.  any recommendations on which to buy ?  there are loads about from £22  for a barrel and piston (at this price i assume it is made of cheese) is there a decent brand?

[htb]

OEM is best then Meteor then prob Hyway. And yes then there are the chance your arm £22 ones.

[peatff]

12 hours ago, man1nvan said:

 i cant believe how cheap bits are.   i have fins missing (from the tractor incident) so may well replace the whole lot.  any recommendations on which to buy ?  there are loads about from £22  for a barrel and piston (at this price i assume it is made of cheese) is there a decent brand?

 

I tried a cheap piston in my Stihl 044 and it's been fine since, never missed a beat. A couple of broken fins won't make much difference, I'd try cleaning it up first.

[Dan Maynard]

21 hours ago, man1nvan said:

 i cant believe how cheap bits are.

Based on the last one I bought, a Meteor piston will be 25 quid or so. I'd say worth doing that and keeping OEM cylinder rather than trying a mega cheap cylinder, it won't perform or last.

[spudulike]

As HTB said, the best is OEM, then Meteor, then Hyway then...the rest. I have tried Farmtec and did a little porting on it and the plating is pretty thin and soft whereas the OEM, Meteor and Hyway are much harder and good depth.

I had a quick look on the Bay and there isn't much available apart from US listings.

Piston wise, the, the same applies. Meteor are pretty much as good as OEM...Caber rings....great pistons, Hyway are also pretty good then the likes of VEC and Golf will be OK....I believe both are Indian and from the same factory.

I would take the top end off and see what it looks like. If you can get a pic up, it will show us what we are working with.

The basic rules are that the bore needs to be free of scores......a score is where the plating has been worn through to the aluminium bore in a thin vertical line and not to be confused with the aluminium transfer that the melted piston has deposited on to the bore.

Roughly speaking, I would reckon I managed to save around 90% of seized saws that came in to me. One did fail a few years later....the guy ran over it with his landy!!