Many new chainsaws come with an improper gas-tube length which prevents the pickup to always drop to the bottom of the tank. Test it out with an empty tank. turn the saw in all directions and watch the pickup of the hose fall to the bottom. If it gets stuck at the side of the tank, you have to pull the hose out a little bit with a needlenoseplier. Then cut off as much as is required to let the hose fall to the bottom in all positions of the saw. Now the saw will run until the gas-tank is really empty . Peter Thoss Sept. 21/18

The Stihl MS 180 C-BE nearly made it 2 years before the piston seized. The dealer said I had used the wrong gas mixture or it had water in it. The following used the same gas out of the same can on the same day and they are still running: Husqvarna String Trimmer 323L, Husqvarna Chainsaw 460R and Echo Power Head PAS-260. So that leads me to believe that it was a product failure. When I was real young we hauled logs and pulpwood. In 50 years of using chainsaws, I can never remember a chainsaw piston scoring with after being used as little as this was.

The older model Homelites where built much better than the later models. While that model was not as powerful as some of the others in its class, it is worth restoring ----if you can get parts for less than about $200. More than that, restoration will be simply for the fact it was your grandfathers saw.

Strange, I have 20 year old Stihl chainsaw I use maybe once a year sometimes a dozen times and might go 2 years between use, I've never had a problem starting it. Fires right up and I'm embarrassed to say I've never done any maintenance on it, nothing. I have a sixteen inch bar and know how to use it so never had a need for anything bigger even on huge trees. I could buy a 20" bar and chain from a dealer and just swap it over if I needed a longer bar but don't. When I do use it i cut tree's not tree and may cut nonstop for 12 or more hours so I could never mess around with batteries. If you're just going to cut holes to spear fish and not harvesting ice for ice house storage or a few branches every now and then battery power will work fine for you. Just remember if you go cheap you get what you pay for.