Crap sorry. Missed out the vital information. I'm looking for the 661c-m W with the extras

4 minutes ago, daltontrees said:

I think you are confusing soils with shrinkable clays.

 

Sorry, maybe I'll expand. The "more information" tab for a lot of areas contains the details about drainage and what the soil drains to i.e. Chalk or limestone. Information (at least in my experience) is also given which can show sub soil types 

So I've been looking at buying a 661 as it's the ideal saw for me. After having a go with someone's 362 with the heated grips I fancy that for myself. I feel like my 261 would have benefitted from it more but it's too late now. 

Wherever I go they aren't in stock and everywhere seems to say discontinued. It's also no longer listed on the Stihl site. Anyone know what's going on? 

They also do a pre filter for the 661 according to the parts list:  p/n: 0000 141 0602 costs £2 and you could put oil on it if you were that way inclined 

Hylomar universal blue is the only thing I found that was resistant to pretty much everything on earth. I'm reluctant to use setting sealants on stuff as I always find that it doesn't bond in one place or you can't get it apart in the future or it sets as you're assembling. To be fair to Hylomar it's worked perfectly, designed for metal to metal, rated from -50 to +250 and seals like nothing I've ever seen but you can still take things apart if you need to! 

Hopefully this link works... You should be able to see what soil you have here> 

1 hour ago, waribai said:

Do these tend to cause issues?

What sort of issues are you concerned about? Subsidence? It all depends on the soil type and what you plan on doing with the tree and where? Subsidence usually occurs where you have a large tree, close to the house in clay soil. A large enough tree will pull enough water from clay soil that it shrinks leading to subsidence. 

The small one outside is so small that I would be amazed if it ever caused any issues. It's also far enough from the property that I wouldn't say it could cause any damage. Worst possible scenario is it gets a lot bigger, shrinks the soil and you have a small dip in the driveway as a result. Hard to see where the other one is located distance wise but I would suggest it's so far away that I wouldn't be remotely concerned. Where abouts is the property? If you give me a street name and location I could tell you the soil type 

I use Hylomar blue. It's a "non-setting" sealant so it never hardens or looses it's seal. You put it on both parts and leave it until the solvent evaporates and it becomes like extremely tacky rubber. You can also put a very thin layer on paper seals. I've never had a crankcase leak when using it, I found out about if from the Kart racing guys.

Good news!! Thanks for updating the thread. Nothing more annoying than helping someone fix things and never knowing if it fixed it. Especially if you're trawling the forum for a fix to an issue ?

Wouldn't surprise me. People grab brushcutters out the van, start em up, rev the tits off them from cold until they run out of gas and they go from red hot to no fuel and a complete shutdown. Poor poor engines... 

Apart from the above the main thing I haven't seen here is compression? Brush cutters go from freezing cold to flat out without the proper care all the time. Scored cylinders are pretty common.

Well it will stop it sucking through the fuel pipe. I should be right in saying there's two pipes out of the carburettor that go into the valve on the top of the tank? Part 8&9 in the image below? If that one way valve is shagged then it will just be pushing air in and out of the easiest part which will be the return line not the fuel vacuum line hence why you can hear pumping in the tank. Otherwise you could have the pipes hooked up to valve 7 back to front? 

8 hours ago, Khriss said:

@Paddy1000111   things i do fr you kid  ?

 

Gravity Hook Survival Folding Grappling Hook Climbing Claw Outdoor Carabiner

WWW.EBAY.CO.UK

---

Jaws are open due to the gravity when it touches the objects, closed when reversed, an efficient tool to pick up small things out of reach. Not for Climbing Mountain. It can open covers of...

 

 

( this obvs not one of my busiest days .......  )  K

I didn't notice your commitment Khriss! I was too busy ranting! ? I might get one of these. Looks like you can lock it shut too. and it comes with "Strong and hardness" and a "Shrapnel bolt" for when it explodes I guess? Plus the photos show a naked looking bloke climbing a cliff so it must be good right? 

3 Claws Grappling Hook Folding Stainless Steel Outdoor Climbing Survival Tool UK

WWW.EBAY.CO.UK

---

Lightweight and compact size with folding claws, very easy to carry and use. For outdoor activities, survival training, adventures. 1 Gravity hook. Hook size: 7.8" 3.9" 0.39". A...

Did you replace flange under the bulb too? This part-

Flange for Stihl BG86, BG86C Leaf Blowers - 4241 120 2200 | L&S Engineers

WWW.LSENGINEERS.CO.UK

---

Flange Genuine Stihl Part OEM Part No. 4241 120 2200 Suitable for the following Stihl Machines: BG 86, BG 86 C, BG 66, BG 66 C, SH 56, SH 56 C, SH 86, SH 86 C, BG 86, BG 86 C...

 The one that has the one way valve in it? If you take the fuel line off and put your finger over the inlet and pump the bulb does it suck onto your finger and the bulb stay depressed or can you pump away and there's no vacuum? 

11 minutes ago, Samantha48 said:

Paddy Thankyou for defending the older generation wishing to start a new career in tree surgery ? you may have an onslaught of negative responses sorry. However if it works out for me the great and if it doesn’t then At least I tried. I have to work another 25 years before I can retire and I need a challenge and by the sounds of it it will be just that. Obviously no one my age must be tree surgeons  !!!!! Looks like I have my first spiteful response ? thank goodness for positive forward thinkers like you x

Do what makes you happy Sam, that's all that really matters. If you know what you're doing with business you can make good money. If you don't know what you're doing with business then you will still easily be able to make enough money to cover your bills. In every industry you will get people who hate it and tell you everything is s*** and you won't make any money and you are making a massive mistake, if you look around the corner you will find massive success stories and people who make good money. In the aircraft world you could work for a company and earn £23k, yet there are guys who work for themselves who have the same training/qualifications but have a business head, they do the same work and earn over 80k and nearly no tax so don't pay any attention to it.

Someone I know got a tree surgeon in to fell a tree for them, the property owner said they would do all the cleanup and disassembly so the guy turned up, felled the tree and walked away. He was there for less than an hour and charged £200, the property owner was amazed at how cheap of a deal that was. If you can't make money in this industry then you are definitely doing something wrong. 

Like I said though, do what makes you happy. I look at people who work in London at desk jobs. They slog into work on overcrowded trains in the dark every day and spend all their life in the office. They work every hour under the sun including weekends sucking up to bosses and doing exactly what everyone tells them to do so they get promoted. You live in central london, you get up at 5:30/6am to get the tube into work for your 7am start, you leave your small flat, tripping over the pram left in your shared hallway because your neighbours suck. You've battelled through the angry faces and you're on a packed train with a load of depressed looking people. You arrive into work at 7am greeted with a quick hello from people who don't know your name, you sit down at your desk next to Paul who's been fighting you for that promotion and your day of stress starts, answering emails and making phone calls because you are the latest scapegoat for another company misshap that's cost the company a £1b sale, it wasn't your fault but you're at the bottom of the ladder so it's in your lap. You eat lunch at your desk because work is manic. You're in the office until 7pm as even though your job "finishes" at 5pm you have had to complete the emails and get things wrapped up for the day. You also want to show your boss you're worth keeping. You leave the office for your 1 hour trip home knowing that prick Paul is getting the promotion after a day like that and you get home at 8. You're exhausted but you told your friend you would meet them for dinner so you quickly get changed and get back on the tube, by the time you get back from the swanky restaurant it's 11:30pm, you're exhausted and you're £120 out of pocket for the pleasure. You don't sleep that well knowing that the directors board want to interview you and hear your side of the story at 8am on the upper floors. Lets say they earn £127,000 which sounds amazing but after tax that's £77,300. You're also working and living in london which is extremely expensive, the average single person in London has to spend £793 a month just to live a "basic" life (heating, electricity etc etc) plus another £1800-£2500 for renting a house a month. Now, after transport, food, bills (and pints costing over £5 **shudders**) you're getting around £43,784 to spend on stuff like furniture or meals out or whatever makes you happy. You have an RTI in your wrist from using the computer all day every day and your back hurts from an injury from trying too hard at the gym you pay £100 a month to go to. The bougie london osteopath charges £110 an hour. Would I want to get £43,784 working in the city, sucking up to bosses and taking meds for depression because I would not be enjoying it, hell no.

 Now look at tree work if you're self employed. You live in the countryside, you have a nice cottage with a garden. You told your client you would be there for 8:30 and start cutting at 9am as they said their neighbours aren't happy with the work being done or the noise. You set your alarm for 7, you get up and have a coffee whilst making sure the van is packed up for the day. At 7:30 your groundie arrives at yours as he lives 20 minutes in the wrong direction so he's jumping in your van for the drive there. You leave at 7:35 for the trip there, you stop to get fuel for the chipper and the van. It's a 30 minute trip through country lanes and you get there at 8:20. You set up for the day, chuck on your waterproofs and your ice gloves as it's pissing down with rain and 5 degrees. You climb the tree and get ready to start. It's 8:50 now and you say sod it, lets start. You are cracking on with the tree removal and your groundie is working his ass off dragging branches 50 yards across the garden to the chipper as you weren't able to park nearby. The neighbour comes out and has a go at you because you started 10 minutes early, you apologise and say your watch must be running fast (It's not but they aren't going to climb 50ft up and check) They tell you they are going to report you for a breach of the peace and go back indoors. You carry on and think nothing of it because police take a day to turn up for a robbery and they aren't going to turn up for something this dumb. As you're working away then pop, your chainsaw stops it won't restart. You don't have a second climbing saw so the remainder of the job is done with your 261 ground saw with a 15" bar on. The property owner comes out at this point to give you a nice hot brew, you stop for 20 minutes to have lunch and warm up. You get the tree down by 3 and you're exhausted however you help your groundie to clear up, pack away and you finish by 4. You head back, dump the load of chippings and get home by 5:30, you light your woodburner, fuelled by the logs in your workshop and you hang up yours and your groundies waterproofs to dry them for the next day. Your groundie heads off home and you put your feet up with a nice hot brew. That evening you walk the half mile to the local pub, you're greated by friendly faces, the barman has your drink on the bar as he knows what you drink, have steak and chips and you chat shite until closing at 10 you get back a little merry to the smell of the woodburner. You're in bed by 10:30. Now let's say you've charged £500 for the tree removal. you usually pay your groundie £120 for the day (Still more than some companies in london are paying their groundies), as he's a young lad (17), he worked bloody hard and he's happy to learn so you give him a little bonus and pay him £135 for the day, that's darn good money. It was a bad day, your chainsaw broke so you have to order a new ignition module that you pick up from the dealership on your way back (£35) you also burned £30 of fuel in the van and chipper on that job. So far you've paid out £200 for the day. You've "Profited" £300 for the day. By the time that you've accounted for the chipper maintenance and van insurance etc for the day lets say you've made ££270 for the day. You have a good accountant that costs £600 per year and your a LTD company. Lets say you're earning under the vat threshold (even though you are better off being on flate rate VAT and getting some ££ out of it) and you're good at being tax efficient so lets forget about tax for now. Well you've just made £20 less than our London friend for the day. You've got up later, worked less hours, you might be cold and wet and a bit pissed off because your chainsaw broke but hey, shit happens tomorrow is a new day and you have good weather due in. You pay £1000 a month for your mortgage (not rent) and your living expenses are quite low, you aren't paying to travel to work as you use your work van so it's a business expense, your local pub was £35 for the meal and a few nice pints of local ale, your heating expenses are £0 as you have the wood burner, your electricity is low as you've been out all day anyway. Your living expenses are £450 for the month. At the end of the day you feel satisfied that you did a good job, your fit and healthy as that's your job. You may have a little niggling back issue but you pay £40 a visit to the osteopath and he has fixed it before every time.

Which life would you prefer? I'm sure that guys are going to come on now and say "you wouldn't ever charge £500 for a tree job" "you would never make that much" "you forgot about this" bla bla bla. At the end of the day, over 1/3 of your life is spent at work. I know for sure that I would rather spend 1/3 of my life enjoying what I do, and the other 2/3 having a lifestyle I enjoy. I sure as hell couldn't spend 1/3 of my life at an empty job behind a desk having to do everything my overpaid overlords want me to do and then spend the other 2/3 of my life in a noisy apartment going out for expensive meals and posting it up on instagram hoping that people I used to know seeing me buy expensive things gives my empty life more value. But hey, maybe I'm more simplistic than the others, money doesn't make me happy. One of my friends once said to me that money is just a lubricant, it makes life easier but a F***** engine is a F***** engine and no amount of oil will fix it. 

5 minutes ago, Samantha48 said:

Is that where you trained Paddy x

I have yea! I have my First Aid renewal with them soon too as they have been able to continue training. They're really good trainers. I think they also offer some discount if you book a load of courses with them. They tailor their training almost entirely to how quickly you learn, if you know your stuff then they can up the pace and teach you some more advanced techniques that aren't part of the assessment but are good to know, if you're struggling they slow it down and give you extra time at the end of the day if you need it 1 to 1. Having done the aircraft stuff before I can't tell you how many training days I've been on and they were nearly all slow, droll and like learning off a script. The courses at hi-line were the only ones that I was excited to be on and I can't wait to go back again for my first aid refresher.

I agree Khriss but when I did that chestnut removal a few weekends back, I set up my primary anchors on the main leader and I was working around around the canopy removing it all from over the greenhouse and surrounding property (it was 3/4 surrounded/overhanging) being positively rigged up and over and it would have been so much easier to have a mini grapple to move between each set of leaders as I cleared down. Even a mini grapple on a old bit of rope just to pull myself across a gap. There have been tonnes of scenarios where I was trying to throw my 10M lanyard carab over a branch and trying to swing it back to bridge a 4ft gap instead of going back to the main leader and branch walking back out again. 

18 minutes ago, Khriss said:

( one for Sam,  with the Reg Coates,  extrodinaire in British Columbia   

) K

Well, thanks Khriss, now I want a grapple. How have I never thought of this before?! All this clambering around when I could grapple across like the SAS ?

In all seriousness, where can I get one of those?! 

11 hours ago, AHPP said:

Samantha. You're an old woman wanting to break into a profession dominated (for largely good reason) by young men. It's very competitive, most people make shit money and many people hate it after a while. You're at a further disadvantage being on an island with limited employers. Then consider we live in interesting economic times where bold career moves are risky, especially ones with significant money outlay for training that you might need to use to buy food with in the coming months. And as if all that didn't make for a steep enough hill to climb already, you're annoying, closing yet more doors.

Now anything's possible of course and you may delight in proving me and the world wrong but you're starting at several large disadvantages. I'd ordinarily not care what you try to do but in this instance I must strongly encourage you to not give money to the absolute wasters who constitute the majority of the training industry in this country. Their undeserved dominance is making the industry shitter for the rest of us and I want them starved.

Wow, seems like someone got a bit stung in the industry. Personally I used to be an aircraft engineer, the job was boring, the management was bad. I owned my own company providing contract aircraft repair and the income from tree work (self employed) is double and it's 8 hour days not 12 and I'm not having to piss off all over europe... Depends on what you do in the industry I guess and how well you can run a company. There's people who are 35-45 going into tree work and they can do very well for themselves if they know how to run a company. If you're going to work self employed and earning less than £200 a day you aren't doing something right.... 

Hi-Line Training in Exeter, Devon is worth looking at Sam. £2376 for 30/31/38/39... 

44 minutes ago, Darkslider said:

I think I left it on 2 turns out on the H screw as that was where it seemed happiest, it was running and revving up nicely at that whereas any less and it would cut out if the revs were left to drop. Perhaps I should have given it another 1/4 turn on the L screw too, it seemed to be inconsistent I thought I'd fixed it as it was idling and revving nicely for a period but then it cut out and was a pig to start again so I carried on tweaking.

 

I've had to hand it back as it is and admit defeat as it's needed tomorrow, but i checked the needle seat while the carb was off and I couldn't blow through it while it was held shut by the spring so I don't think that's the reason for it flooding, the 'tang' had a slight bend in it that would have limited how much the float needle could open too would have been interesting to compare that to a new one and see if that's the shape it's meant to be or if it's been modified in the past. Also checked the impulse pipe was still on the airbox, filters and lines clear with no holes, compression was 150 psi after a few pulls-all the normal stuff. 

 

It's had plenty of use so a bit of blow by isn't unlikely, when it does run it has loads of power reportedly. I'll try and get some feedback on how it does this week, if it's no good it could be coming your way ?

 

The arm on the fuel inlet valve should be flush iirc from the Zama c1q rebuild manual. You should be able to put a straight edge across the carb body and that arm should just touch it. 2 turns out on the H screw sounds like a lot to me though?

"place a straight edge or Zama Z gauge across the carburetor body. The free end of the metering lever should be 0 to 0.3 mm – 0 to 0.012″ below the straight edge"

Spudlike knows more than me on this but I had similar issues with my 200t. Turns out I was tuning it like a mug and not having a high enough LA setting. It was flooding on idle/didn't have enough airflow to vaporise the fuel properly meaning it would bog. Should be a BPMR7A for NGK or a WSR6F in bosch. Maybe they got confused 

Like I said, contact chainsawbars and ask them for help. They'll be able to sort you out ?

you should message chainsawbars.co.uk. They have upto 64" bars for the ms660 for milling. I'm sure they would be able to help you out. You're just going to keep getting told to buy an 880 otherwise. I get where you're coming from though. Why spend £1200 on a saw you're only going to use <20 times a year

I don't think 4 weeks is an intensive course anyway if that's cs30/31/38/39 or the NTPC equivalent? Usually a week for cs30/31, a week for 38 and 3 days for cs39? 

2 minutes ago, Rough Hewn said:

Paddy,

A 261 will not pull a 25” bar, it doesn’t matter what you’ve seen on YouTube.

I know it won't. I'm not asking it to pull a 25" bar. I just want it to cut up to 12" limbs when limbing a tree on the ground without me having to bend over for hours. Just want the ergonomics, not the size ?