MS230 survives running on petrol?

[maybelateron]

The guy who grazes his cattle on our two small fields rang me with a problem with his MS230 this afternoon. He had done one hour of sawing yesterday and about the same today, when he got fed up with the saw dying repeatedly. Turns out he had inadvertently filled up the saw with petrol instead of 2 stroke. To my amazement when he brought me the saw, the compression seemed ok, I drained the tank confirming the diagnosis, and refuelled with proper 2 stroke. Within a few minutes the saw was running well and idling happily. I was amazed by this. I would imagine the bore must be scored from this misadventure, and I can't imagine the crank/big end are happy. Time will tell, but I am amazed it carried on working for so long on pure petrol. Anyone else got any anecdotes of this nature?

[Dan Maynard]

Does he normally run 25:1? Enough oil hanging about in the crankcase I guess.

 

No, never tried it myself.

[spudulike]

If he was using short bursts, the H screw was running rich and turning it off often, you may get away with it. A member by the name of Gardenkit ran a strimmer for a fair while trying to seize it on neat fuel and was amazed how long it lasted, it can happen.

[difflock]

The brother was recently reminsicing about inadvertently running our Kazz engined strimmer on straight petrol until it seized. Refilled with  2stroke mix after it cooled and all was fine, it survived many more years use after this misuse too. But that would have been back in the days of a 25:1 mix.

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, difflock said:

The brother was recently reminsicing about inadvertently running our Kazz engined strimmer on straight petrol until it seized. Refilled with  2stroke mix after it cooled and all was fine, it survived many more years use after this misuse too. But that would have been back in the days of a 25:1 mix.

...and leaded petrol, I  think that had some lubricity.

[maybelateron]

13 hours ago, Dan Maynard said:

Does he normally run 25:1? Enough oil hanging about in the crankcase I guess.

I don't know, good thought though.

[bmp01]

Personally I've never seen any trouble with bearings from running wrong oil/petrol mix. Plenty of piston problems of course but even those saws that seize pistons, more often than not bearings are ok after a good clean.

First thing to go with wrong oil mix is the piston - be interesting with this one to pull the exhaust off and take a look at piston skirt and piston rings.