I just picked up an 026 in a box... well, 2 boxes and a peanut butter jar. The saw looks great - owner took it apart hoping to figure out why it was so hard to pull over, but the only problem seems to have been his arthritis. The original bar is badly worn, though, so a new one will soon be in order. If anyone has an extra one in nice shape lying around doin' nuthin', please let me know.
Only thing I have left in 16" that could use 325 is a hardnose bar that came off a 040. 325 or 3/8 Not pretty for prom queens.
On further thought, maybe I should look for a 3/8" picco bar and get a loop of MasterMech's chain to go with. The sprocket is worn anyhow...
Guess I'm going with that plan. I made an offer on a Picco bar on eBay and it was just accepted. Ohhhh MaaasterMech!
7T for work. A stock 026 isn't going to like 8T with the bar buried. 8T maybe if you were in a smallish cant for racing.
I'll be very interested to see how this saw performs. I just put the cylinder on without a base gasket and, for the first time ever on any saw, measured the squish. It's at about 0.0135", so I'll be looking for some thin gasket material as an alternative to the OEM gasket. A soda can might be close.
I would think the can would be a lot thicker than .007-.010" you're going to be looking for. Now I wanna run out to the garage and measure one, lol. Wonder if there is a market for thin copper base gaskets for saws?
For the record, the ideal gasket material turned out to be a manilla file folder. This was KRL's suggestion, and it worked beautifully. The squish is as close to .020" as it's reasonable to hope for, and compression is in the neighborhood of 185. What really surprised me was that the saw fired on the second pull and started on the third, despite having been disassembled and in a box for a few years.
The sprocket finally came in yesterday, and I picked it up just before the shop closed. With any luck I'll be able to cut a few cookies this afternoon. Here it is: the saw that I got in boxes and jars. It needed new fuel and oiler lines, and I managed to tear the impulse hose during installation and had to replace that too, but the only part actually missing from the box was the e-clip for the sprocket.
Thank you! I can't take a whole lot of credit here, this was a piece of cake. I barely even had to clean any parts. The guy I bought it from didn't know much about small engines, but he was clean and meticulous working on it nonetheless.
First cuts, per request. For reasons that will be obvious, this is video is a little shorter than average. The wood is pear, which by the book has a density right in-between red and white oak.
