New Stihl saws for 2021

[BeerGeek]

So, I got a hold of the US 2021 product info guide from my local dealer, and saw some new models listed, which piqued my curiosity:

MS 400 CM: New model featuring magnesium alloy piston, anti-vibe and M-tronic, pumping out 5.6HP. Looks to be an upgrade from the discontinued 441 series.
MS 500i: Now officially available in US. Local dealers only putting in placeholder orders around here (2-4 month guesstimate on delivery).
MS 661 Magnum: In an odd twist, a new, non-MTronic version of the 661. Same powerhead weight and HP. The old-time mechanic at my shop said he might be partly responsible ( ), as he's got 6-7 of them stuck on his shelves that Stihl's crappy test kit can't diagnose what the engine problems are. I'm kicking myself that I impulse bought a stashed 661 CM at the end of last year as my dealers around here stated they had no idea when new saws may show up. AAARRRGGGHHHHHH!
MS 881R: The big boy gets an upgrade. Same power level (8.6HP), and new air filter and captured bar nuts (Yayyy!). Reduced emissions (boo) and a port for connecting diag probe/software (wait, what's under the hood that requires diag software?!?!). Looks like potential computer related problems awaiting this model.

Also, the MS 461 and MS 880 models have been declared EOSL, and you can only get what the distributors have in stock. I was able to score one of the remaining 461s, as my now 7+ yr old one is the workhorse for my biz.

Let the comments begin!!!

 

[Frankie]

462c is supposedly available with a standard carb also

 

[BeerGeek]

The only 462 models listed in the guide and Stihl's website are the CM and the CM Resue, so only MTronic as far as I can see.

 

[Frankie]

I assure you sir , the 462 and the 661 are both available with standard adj carbs. Just not in NJ 😀

 

[biggun]

I have used the 400 and it is a stonking saw. Really aggressive and pretty light. I thought it was more of a replacement to the 362. A little bit heavier but considerably more poke.

Also used the 500i and the 881. The 500 has been out a while in Norway, seems a good saw but I wonder how long it would last in a logging scenario.

The 881 we used for a bit of milling. Seems to be a good saw but hard to tell what it would be like. We had a 70+” bar on it and a Panther chainsaw mill. It was pretty heavy.

 

[stig]

I got one of the first 6 500is to land ib Denmark.
I probably have 2500 hours of logging on it by now and there has been not a single problem with it.
Best saw I've evdr owned.

 

[Frankie]

2500hrs on a 500i? Pic of diagnostic screen from dealer showing total hours would support that statement ...

 

[Nutball]

Pic of the 462 with standard adjust carb?

 

[stig]

I have logged 2 full seasons with the 500i.
That adds up on the hours, since a season for us is some 7 months.
If I come by my dealer for some rteason, I'll see about having a read out, but I'm not driving all the way just for that.

 

[Frankie]

What have you replaced on the saw during that 2500hrs of operation outside of oil / fuel filters , air filters , regular basic maintenance etc? It seems a bit far-fetched to say you’ve gotten 2500hrs out of a set of piston rings / bearings /seals etc ... in a saw running at 10000rpm in the cut. 10000x60 = 600,000 cycles/hr ... 600,000x 2500hrs = 1.5 BILLION cycles. A vehicle driven for 2500hrs at 60mph will yield 150,000 miles but that’s at about 2000rpm and the vehicle is not being taxed to it max rpm continuously as a chainsaw is. Also the mean piston speed is much faster on a chainsaw than a vehicle by a considerable amount. That vehicles engine would have completed (2000 rpm x 60min/hr x 2500hrs) 300,000,000 million cycles in that same timeframe assuming it was driven at 60mph and the rpm at that speed is 2000. It is a mechanical device and the laws of physics are the same here in WNY as over in Denmark. I’d just love to see the cylinder , rings (especially the ring lands) and piston on that saw after 2500hrs! And to think , poor Frankie replaces his rings on his saw(s) WELL before 2500hrs - guess poor Frankie is just throwing his money away right ?

 

[stig]

No, poor Frankie has saws as a religion.
I don't mess with saws beyond basic maintenance, when they start losing power and get hard to start, I replace them.
Run them into the ground and buy a new one. With the amount of logging we do, it is not the price of a saw that breaks the budget.
I am not religious about saws, I have no more feelings for a saw than I do for a scrench.

We usually get 2-3 years out of the 70 cc saws, which are the ones with the most run time.
I'm actually amazed that you think 2500 hours is unusual.
I bet Magnus has lots of customers that get the same.



We only run alkylate fuel, without knowing much about it, it is my impression that it helps with longevity and running clean.

 

[BeerGeek]

Frankie, related to the MS462, seeing how Stihl's website (US, German and International) all list all options for that saw having MTronic engines, and no dealer here or their Stihl rep able to find anything like that, it does appear you are mistaken on there being a carb-adjusted model. I believe you can "mark my words" on that....

 

[Frankie]

No, poor Frankie has saws as a religion.
I don't mess with saws beyond basic maintenance, when they start losing power and get hard to start, I replace them.
Run them into the ground and buy a new one. With the amount of logging we do, it is not the price of a saw that breaks the budget.
I am not religious about saws, I have no more feelings for a saw than I do for a scrench.

We usually get 2-3 years out of the 70 cc saws, which are the ones with the most run time.
I'm actually amazed that you think 2500 hours is unusual.
I bet Magnus has lots of customers that get the same.



We only run alkylate fuel, withoput knowing much about it, it is my impression that it helps with longevity and running clean.

Yah I run motomix also - good stuff, expensive up front but well worth it in my opinion for longevity and keeping carbon out of the engine - still isn’t going to enable a modern , high performance professional (such as the 500i) chainsaw to clock 2500hrs at 10000rpm In the cut on the same piston, rings, bearings etc at least not on this planet 🌎 and most certainly not with 1.5 Billion cycles 🤪 . You can yap on about it all day but unless you have the dealer plug in screenshot showing the total hours I simply refuse to believe it and I’m certain that others share my viewpoint. Can a guy get 2000+ hrs out of a saw ? Sure - if he’s in love with it and wants to replace components as they wear/ fall out of spec but that costs money. The newer epa friendly saws last about 1/2 as long as the older versions and nobody’s arguing this but you @stig . Some running saws for their livelihood /logging run the living piss out of them for about a year and sell them for 1/2 price and buy a new one the following year. The reports coming in from around the globe on the 500i are showing + or - 6months of use before failure and it’s about 50 men to your 1. Are they all collectively lying and bullshiting us or is it something else 🤔. Later tater

 

[Frankie]

Frankie, related to the MS462, seeing how Stihl's website (US, German and International) all list all options for that saw having MTronic engines, and no dealer here or their Stihl rep able to find anything like that, it does appear you are mistaken on there being a carb-adjusted model. I believe you can "mark my words" on that....

You kind sir are incorrect about that as I’ve had one in my hands and actually used /built one. Yeppers a 462c standard carb (no mtronic) , even had the holes in the cover for the carb adjustment. Mark my words!

 

[Magnus]

No, poor Frankie has saws as a religion.
I don't mess with saws beyond basic maintenance, when they start losing power and get hard to start, I replace them.
Run them into the ground and buy a new one. With the amount of logging we do, it is not the price of a saw that breaks the budget.
I am not religious about saws, I have no more feelings for a saw than I do for a scrench.

We usually get 2-3 years out of the 70 cc saws, which are the ones with the most run time.
I'm actually amazed that you think 2500 hours is unusual.
I bet Magnus has lots of customers that get the same.

We only run alkylate fuel, without knowing much about it, it is my impression that it helps with longevity and running clean.

Most loggers I know do the same. Its no economy in repairing money makers today. All run Aspen here.
If it's a pro saw, 2500hrs is not rare. But the past 10 years it has become harder as saws are just not that even anymore. Those that get a good one will, others will not.
I have high hopes for the 500, it shows the way as Jonsered did 70 years ago in a modern interpretation.
The few I see here sem to be running well and are all well past 500hrs.

Many here run Husqvarna and sadly they have a hard time getting up to half of this today.
It is more Stihl in the woods today than Husqvarna and this breaks my heart. My region here was Jonsered/Partner country. Both long gone now....
Non X-Torq saws easily ran 2500hrs with some repairs. 2000hrs was intended on a pro saw. Still should be in my opinion.

A Beech logger here in south has 2000hrs a year,+5-600hrs more in other big wood.
A Spruce logger in mid Sweden easily get 2500hrs in a year.
Two very different jobs.

 

[Frankie]

Yah , I know a guy that rebuilds lotsa 1127 series saws ... 400hrs before it needed a new top end , and yes he put an hour meter on it. Parts and assemblies are designed with a certain lifespan in mind , besides , most loggers go by board ft produced not by hours 😄. There are only so many rpm in an engine , from the moment you start it the engine is trying to slowly destroy itself. You claim saw gets 2500+ hrs on original jig/slug bearings / seals ? I say you are full of beans. I’ve wasted enough time with you 2 birds on this ... Oh by the way I have a gas engine car that has 800,000 miles, yeppers - it will only take me 16 more years to top a million ! Later tater

 

[Nutball]

The number of revs an engine gets before failure is highly variable depending on manufacture quality and defects, phisycal stresses during the life of the tool such as extreme temps and impacts, oil quality and concentration, air filtration quality and maintenance, the type of dust encountered: sand, hardwood, softwood, and how the saw is run: lots of idle time, lots of dogged in low rpm or mostly screaming high revs.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a life difference of several hundred hours based on the variables.

 

[Frankie]

Usually any manufacturing defects will manifest themselves rather quickly and be covered under warranty . The saws are designed from the manufacturer to run Wide-Open in a variety of environments, from subzero to 90degrees temperature and below sea-level to 7000ft or more and any impacts (either a tree falling on them or iron running them over) usually result in a nice boat anchor. We are running alkylate fuel and know how to clean the filter and maintain the saw / sharpen chain in this situation so One really wouldn’t expect to see a variance from the bell-curve average of hundreds of hours from saw to saw. Of course there are guys out there that can wreck an anvil so .... In other words( out of say 1000 500is being run ) the service “life” of the engine can plotted on a graph and an “average life of engine”’ determined using the Stihl software which plugs into the saw and gives runtime hours . One would expect to find a cluster of dots at “X” with some failing sooner and some later. They have run 500hr wide-open continuous tests and the results show this to be true. One other item of note : it’s not possible to fully balance a single cylinder 2-stroke chainsaw motor or any single cylinder for that matter and this degree of variance from engine to engine can have a huge effect on engine longevity

 

[Magnus]

A pro saw from husqvarna was to last more than 2000hrs, farmer/semipro 1000-1500hrs, Hobby 50-500hrs.
This was what they designed them for and was what you paid for.
Saws today are much less even. Sometimes they run a lot others not that much. Older husqvarna saws rarely went less than 1500hrs most more than 2500hrs, newer have a hard time to pass 1000.

500i has injection and that is a good start on making these run longer. With Alkylate fuel I don't see why it could not run more than any other saw on market today.
Its more compareble to conventional engine than strato so I think this is a step in right direction.
Runtime in these software saws is not accurate. Not the other info either, but it gives a point of direction.

 

[stig]

The part I don't get is why a 500i should have fever run hours than other Stihl saws in the same class.
Same bearings, same cylinder, same piston etc.
Or did they suddenly decide to put some sub standard stuff in the 500i.

I mean, when the 462 came to Denmark in 2018, we switched all our 441s out for it.
It was simply so much better, that to hang onto last generation would be stupid.
We switched the last 2 of the 462s out for 500is this winter.

That means they have run 2½ logging season, which adds up to 17-18 months of use or 2700 hours.
One was finished, but the other one was still running fine ( Until the apprentice dropped a tree on it and completely disintegrated it).

So you saying that people only get 500 hours out of saws in that class is baffling to me.
We've always got somewhere near that amount of hours out of our 70cc saws.

Of course, we run them stock and we only log.
We don't do firewood, which I've been told is WAY harder on both folks and gear.

 

[Magnus]

I don't think its sub standard stuff in 500i or same as the others.
Main differenci the the two is the injection on 500i of curse but piston cylinder is not the same.
500i is more like a saw without Strato engine as the 462 has.

Most firewood sellers I have here run older saws as the now don't last very long.

Stratifyed engines is like a normal engine with two 6mm holes in crankcase.
Its not a good idea and was not a good idea in 1924 when they had it Rinco saws either.
They left this to get more durable engines. So will we need to do now if we want them to last.
With injection there is no need for strato engines to get good emissions. The system will however need to get better info from the burn by heat or lambda or something to get correct values.

Flushed engines can not be compared with valved engines as they are way to different.

Reason for having flushed two strokes in saws is the weight/power ratio and few parts per hp. Theyalso can run in any position, this is also needed. They are not fuel efficient or give good emissions, never will as its too hard to control temps and flow.

462:



500i

 

[treebogan]

Its pretty amazing that you guys are getting 2500 hours out of a saw.

 

[stig]

We've always run the 70 cc saws for 2 years.
The 441 had a gazillion carburator problems, which made us trade some of them in early,
But that was not because the saws were worn out, just that we tired of the hassle with the carbs.

 

[Magnus]

Its pretty amazing that you guys are getting 2500 hours out of a saw.

It is not that common here now, but I hope to see it more again.
I think these 500i might do it. We will see soon enough. A year go by pretty fast...

 

[Nutball]

Do you think oil ratio standards or even oil quality have been the cause of the shorter life of newer saws or just the new tech and stratos alone?