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They are very difficult to drive on roads - the differentials have no slip and the transmission winds up. They need regular driving up onto lumps of wood or concrete one wheel at a time otherwise the gearbox explodes. If you need to manage 2000 acres of woodland with lots of rivers to cross, and own an oil well, I can't think of a better vehicle!

Yup - "tilt bed" is the term Ifor use. However, when I "tilt" it the logs do seem to come out quite smartly!

Yup, Ifor Williams CT166. It is a tipper as well - so you can drive vehicles straight onto it, no faffing about with ramps. Brilliant trailer.

I also have a 4.6 EFI - while the video is great, they really aren't that fast. There is considerable comedy value in overtaking people while driving a land rover (especially X5 drivers), but a supercar it isn't. This is mine, working:

It will do it, but not "with gusto". You'll need to keep the chain very sharp and be pretty gentle with it in knotty oak. If you can get a semi-skip chain that would be helpful. If you want "with gusto" get hold of a 660, or a big bit of old iron (075?) with a 36" bar.

Look, I find it hard enough to say 460 rather than 046, and that change happened years ago.

Still depends on what you want to do with it. Last weekend I took the 009 out to clear up the dead elms that had blown down across the footpath - I think technically it is the farmer's job, but we help each other. Total job time was about 2 hours - mostly piling brash and loading 6 foot lengths of timber into the dump truck. The biggest diameter was about 14 inches, and I had to make about 4 cuts (out of about 100) from both sides. Having the 260 would have saved me about one minute in total. That same farmer phoned me last year and said there was a big oak down, could I help. Did I take the 009 or the 260? Hell no, a 460 for limbing, and two 090s for milling. Used about 20 litres of mix and got some great boards + a big trailer of firewood. Same task (helping the neighbours)...totally different requirement in terms of kit!

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a 260 - it's a damn good saw, I have one. But for a guy helping out the neighbours, I don't think that a 260 is going to do the job materially faster than a 181. Yes, it will make the cut 25% faster, but cutting time is not the big part of the job. Of course, OP may live in a forest and helping out the neighbours may involve clear felling a few acres.

Why is it not up to the job? I'm guessing you're running a 12" bar on it, and a 260 with an 15" bar isn't a radical difference. I have an 009 (very old Stihl, tiny saw) and it isn't a whole load less capable than my 260. If the 009 couldn't do a job, then I wouldn't be selecting the 260. Is it taking you too long to cut stuff, or is the stuff too big for you to cut? If you're slicing up big rounds, then you need a proper big saw. If you're looking for huge speed up for limbing jobs, the 260 won't deliver it.

Gransfors splitting maul. Splits pretty much anything in front of it - if I can't get something to break in three wallops of that, it gets passed to the 460. Heikki Vipurkirves for straight grained rounds. It won't touch anything knotty, but it is the mutts nuts for the right wood.

You can defend yourself, but not your property. If someone is nicking your logs and you get a gun, threaten them, and then shoot them when they fail to clear off, you'll do time for murder. Thoroughly unfair IMO, but that's the law. If someone corners you and you happen to pick up the nearest weapon which happens to be a gun and you shoot them, you need to explain why the gun was not in the gun cabinet. If you have a fair reason for having a loaded gun on the kitchen table, then you might get away with it. "I was just coming back from shooting wabbits m'lud" would probably be OK, as long as you had a dead wabbit to hand. The gray area for me is if some nutjob is smashing down the front door, and you deliberately get a gun out to defend yourself. It would be an obvious decision for me with wife and kids in the house, but I'm not sure a court would see it that way. Personally I like the law in Texas: So you see two blokes nicking your logs, you cannot stop them on your own, so it is OK to slot them from 200 yards away with a decent rifle and night vision scope.

Get some anti-vib gloves, you'll need them. Nice saw with bags of torque (like all other 70s iron) but noisy, heavy and vibrates like mad. If you like these, try an 07S, or a non AV 070.

For daily use, I don't service. I make sure they are dry before they go on the shelf, and if they are crudded up, I blow them out with an airline. Touch up sharpening is on site with a file - while I am doing this, I check the rails etc. When I have sufficiently mullered the chain to need proper sharpening (probably about a week of solid work unless I hit dirt), the bar comes off, the covers come off: air filter cleaned out, clutch bearing greased, clutch checked, any obvious odds and sods looked at. I don't worry about the engine at all. I can hear if it is running lean or idling high, and I simply pick up another saw and put the first on the bench for investigation.

If I didn't have access to free wood, and wasn't perverse enough to actually enjoy chopping stuff up with chainsaws and axes, I'd go for coal if I had to use solid fuel. The energy density is about triple, and unless you are buying really, really cheap stuff, there is no need to re size coal before stuffing it in the Rayburn. When you account for the difference in energy density, buying in wood is financial insanity.

Old engineering wisdom: If the answer is an easy-out, you're asking the wrong question. They are truly horrible things, and once you've broken one in your bolt, then you're left with a hardened slug of metal that you can't do anything with. At that point you need a really solid drill press and a carbide spade drill. If the fastener has got stuck and twisted the head off, then a brittle thing of smaller diameter is also highly likely to snap. In the case of your brake bolt it is unlikely to be corroded, so will come out fine with a reverse twist drill, like another poster has said. Ideally you do it in a drill press, but hand held will do as long as you're careful. Start drilling gently, then as you apply more pressure, the drill will catch and spin the bolt out. Remember to centre punch the bolt, or it will tend to wander off track as you start drilling.

I mill with an 8T 27" bar in 3/8 - to be honest, the saw doesn't seem to notice 8T or 7T, just chugs on. These saws are all about torque and will turn pretty much anything. I've had an 070 with a 48" bar cross cutting Oak, didn't seem overly stressed. 090 is the same....just more so. 880 bars will fit (at least mine do) - but the chains that fit the 880 will not fit the same bar on the 070/090 - you need to drill a new tensioner point. If you are getting one of these (clearly old by now), check for air leaks. The oil pump vacuum hose and diaphragm are favourite points. If you are going milling, you need the AV versions. The hard handle ones are....brutal.

076 with a slightly ropey muffler. All the boom of an 090 with with a bit more speed.

Yup, that is exactly it. If a saw was running fine and suddenly it idles fast or slow, work out why. If it has "no power", check the chain first, then worry about the engine. There is so little to go wrong on a 2 stroke that if performance changes in any way, something bad is happening. A plug will read a valid colour if you load the saw up, then kill it in the cut. If you cut, return the saw to idle, then kill it, the plug will read the idle mixture. I would never set H speed without a tach - well I would, but it would be way off full power (probably several k below full speed). Even when I do set up properly, I'm 1000 rpm below the limit. Better to have some slack to compensate for a really cold day, bad fuel, the user revving the knackers off it while not in wood etc....

Saws require very little routine servicing. Bars and chains need a lot of sharpening and a bit of servicing, but the motor bit is pretty much maintenance free. My list, assuming the saw is working fine: - Air filter, check it is clear, blow off as required. - Blow all the crud out of the little spaces where it can block things up - Make sure the mix is fresh, and properly mixed, make sure it has chain lube and pumps it. - Check the sprocket for wear, occasionally take the sprocket off and put a bit of high temp grease on the bearing. That's about it. Never changed a plug on a saw (apart from wreckers I buy from ebay). I'd second the advice on getting a wrecker. The real skill with maintenance is to realise when something is going wrong. I've had several saws dumped on the bench with the explanation "it kept idling really fast, I turned down the idle speed all the time, but it never cured it...then it was running really well and suddenly stopped". Hmmmm, air leak, the £200+ piston and jug job was really not necessary.

As promised, a few pics. Side on view first: Can you tell which bit has been rebuilt?! They obviously feared the power of the PH2, as mine has 5 belts, which should be good for about 25HP, yet the PH2 only delivers 12. A look from the business end shows how much wider than normal this version is: The front wheels are off as I am rebuilding it onto trailer wheels - the metal things simply don't tow well, and even behind a land rover, the bench is pretty immovable. The blade (not in the pics) is coming from Atkinson Walker in Sheffield - they made the original blades for these saws, and have been very helpful with advice. It is getting a "pallet buster" for cross cutting manky logs, and a rip blade for making planks. For the record the bearings are RL14K - the K is important as they are taper bore. Standard bore won't do, which is a pity as standards are half the price. The belts are SPB profile, 2500. As soon as I get the scanner working (damn Windows 7 upgrade), I'll post up a copy of the manual. Absolutely. The quality is unimaginable today. I have no idea what those cast sides would cost if you had to make them now. My 6 year old had decided that he is going to give it to his children - and they might have to change the bearings again, though probably not if they grease them properly.

I'll drag this thread up from the bowels of the site.... I've just got my Liner saw working. Got it from eBay in pretty rough condition (and nothing like £900...), it has needed quite a bit of restoration. The bearings holding the saw shaft were very wobbly, and replacing them is a brute of a job - you need to take the table off to do it properly, and you want to do it properly because the bearings are pricey. It is also powered by a Petter PH2. I think it was an original fit, because the girders that the whole thing sits on are much wider than yours, and as a result, the PH2 is nice and low - so you can run wood though the saw and straight out the other side. Yours doesn't have a riving knife or guard - be careful that a piece does not get caught on the blade and come back in your face at about 100 mph - that would hurt a lot. As I understand it...you have two of these (one for spares) - if you happen to have an unused fence, I'm a buyer! I have most of the fence parts, but not the fence itself. I'll post some pics when I have them, and if anyone wants a manual for one of these, I can make a copy.

The biggest give away on that 070 is the handlebar hose - I've never seen that hard/ribbed stuff on an 070, if you order it from Stihl today, it is smooth like most of their other saws. The other give away (once you got into it) would be the ignition - it will be Chinese, and actually work a hell of a lot better than anything Stihl ever put in there. I think any new 070 / 090 these days has to be assumed fake unless you personally knew the bloke who bought it from a shop in Brazil. Even on a genuine saw, you could quite easily find fake parts. Pistons and cylinders - lots of fakes, proper ones have Mahle stamped on them, and the pistons have Mahle on the insides. Though some of the fakes can be good - I put a "golf" p&c on an 070 and ran it very hard for a week of milling - no problems at all, saw still works fine. As I mentioned above, the Chinese ignitions are better than anything Stihl put in an 090, my 090 runs perfectly using one. I also wasn't aware of any starter differences between 070s 090s and indeed Contras (early Contras were different externally). I use them pretty interchangeably on all mine....

They don't have as much torque as you'd expect. I use one to knock 50mm holes in sleepers, and it doesn't much like it unless I do a 14mm hole first - then it goes through fine. Chuck is plain, so any round or hex drill will fit. No SDS - no hammer. It does have a reverse, which is very handy for getting a stuck auger bit out!

Honestly, I'd rather get a second hand Stihl and rebuild it! For example, I got most of a 460 for £120 on eBay. A box of parts, some missing. After spending about £130 on new parts, I basically have a brand new 460 - yes, a bit scratched up outside, but the innards will probably out last me. I've had very good experiences with Kawasaki brush cutters, and echo blowers, so I'd be inclined to trust them as brands. The problem with most of the Chinese stuff is that while the visible brand might be the same, the underlying bits may be totally different. I looked at a little generator in B&Q once - £99, what could go wrong. Well, the allegedly identical models on display....had totally different engines, which will make spares a bit of a challenge. You mention cheap angle grinders...every cheap one of those I've had has died within weeks. My old black and decker from about 1992 (when Black and Decker was good) is still going strong....

Pretty fair - you can hang an 090 by the starter, and they weigh a tonne. Have you got a compression tester? A car one will do, as long as it has a valve in the intake that allows the (small) saw engine to pump it up to full pressure. Should be well over 130 psi. Whip the exhaust off and have a look at the piston - if it is scored to hell, then it will need a new one, maybe a new jug as well. Dunno about 035 parts availability - nothing listed on eBay. Actually, what the hell is an 035? Not listed on Acres Internet either...! Don't throw the fuel into the cylinder, chuck half a teaspoon into the carb throat. This will get it into the right place in the cylinder, rather than sitting in the bottom of the crankcase, or going out of the exhaust!