[AT] Fw: Chainsaw Ramblings

[charlie hill]

Some of you know Gerald Johnson,  he reads this list but currently can't post to it.  He wrote me today and said he had been following our chainsaw thread and would really like to comment.  So, I told him to send it to me and I would forward it.   Apparently the message is long enough to exceed Spencers message length so I'm sending it in two parts.  First part below. 

Charlie

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I have been reading over some of the posts regarding chainsaws and wish I could post to the list but for some reason, it won't work.  I receive list traffic, but have not been able to post in years.

For several years my wife and I owned the oldest Stihl dealership in Western North Carolina.  It opened in 1960.  We sold Stihl, Poulan, Homelite, McCulloch, and Husqvarna...and serviced anything brought into the shop thanks to some very good mechanics over the years.   The old Homelites were good saws...the older XL's and Super XL's.  When Homelite went to the mass merchandise stores their quality went into the toilet.  We simply referred to them as watermelon slicers....disposable saws.  I still have an old Super XL that is one of the best I have ever owned.  By far the finest line we sold was Stihl.  We supplied homeowners, loggers, and Christmas tree farmers....and 99% of the time they bought Stihl.  We took on the Husqvarna line a couple of years before we sold the business and the first year we had it, actually sold more Husqvarnas than Stihl...but it had nothing to do with quality.  Husqvarna is made in Charlotte, NC and they decided to put a hurting on Stihl (most of which were then made in Virginia Beach) buy cutting the price on comparable models.  We were able to sell a Husky at about 20% less than a comparable Stihl.  However, when Husky raised the price back to normal, Stihl became #1 in sales again.  Husqvarna is a good saw but in our experience and that of our mechanics (who have worked on both for close to 40 years), the Stihl gives more running time than the Husky.  Most Husky owners told us their saw cut faster than a Stihl because it ran faster.  The funny part was that we always adjusted the two brands to run within a few hundred rpm's of each other.  Two of the best things about Stihl are their parts network...and their warranty.  You can still get parts for many older Stihl saws.  Up until about 15 years ago you could get parts for every saw they ever made...but they eventually dropped some of the older ones from parts inventory.  When the 029 first hit the market ( I think they call it the 290 now) we refused to sell it to Christmas tree farmers.  Most all of them run a small bow bar for tree harvest and since this was the first Stihl saw with a polymer crankcase we were afraid the bar studs would strip out.  Over the next year we were pleasantly surprised to find that none of the 029's sold to farmers by our competitors had any problems so we started selling them to the farmers.  The polymer case proved to be solid.  One thing that always impressed us with Stihl was their willingness to warranty a part that was long past the warranty period.  I saw them replace a broken crankshaft on a 10 year old saw once when our mechanic mentioned it at a training seminar.  They said one of their cranks should never break like that one did and told us to warranty it!  We did...and they paid off.