At the time I was heating with wood, which necessitated spending some serious time in the woods to make sure we didn't freeze. If your saw is going through several tanks of gas per day, the Stihl is the machine for you.
If, however, you only fire up your chainsaw a few times a year, for a half hour at a time, maybe not.
One of the things that's frustrating about my Stihl is that it can be mighty finicky about starting up, especially if it doesn't see regular use. It's not just me. My neighbour has a $1,600 "professional grade" Stihl, and he spends just as much time cursing it as I do my $500 not-quite-professional-grade model.
Last year I spent $150 on a carb rebuild, thinking that would help. It didn't.
Today I was briefly feeling motivated. My Stihl weed-eater hasn't run since last October, and with only a half hour or so of dinking around I had it purring like a kitten. Only issue is that button in the centre of the cutting head that's supposed to feed out more line doesn't seem to work. Then you have to pry the end off it and feed out more line by hand. A pain in the ass, but at least I got it running.
That success prompted me to take a crack at the saw. After an hour of cursing and at least three dozen pulls on the rope, I was perusing the Home Depot website to see if they have any good deals on chainsaws. That's when I remembered I still have the Poulan Pro Classic. It's been sitting in the corner of the woodshed for ten years, neglected and forgotten.
Cleaned it up a bit, poured in some fresh gas, and that puppy fired up on the third pull! And I'd forgotten how much quieter it is than the Stihl. You can do an afternoon of small trim jobs around the yard and not suffer major hearing loss.
I'm reluctant to say that makes the Poulan a better machine. At the same time, there's a lot to be said for chainsaws that start!
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