Isn’t their house brand - not SEF but SuperTech the same? I see a JASO FD mark with VPxxxxx on it. I also see the same for Home Depot’s PowerCare brand.
Echo Red Armor 2 Stroke Oil VOA
- Thread starter jtwrace
- Start date
We used stihl orange bottle for years while I did tree work back in the day. The stuff stunk, although 30 plus years later that smell of stinky Conventional 2 stroke brings back good memories. We had a new guy who insisted on using his own saw when we were dropping 100 ash trees that were killed off by the ash borer. This guy was adamant that his amsoil 100/1 oil was better than the “junk” we were using. Day 3 his saw locked up and was shot. It was a newish 044 and a glimpse down the spark plug hole showed plenty of piston wall damage. Had he have straight gassed it the saw wouldn’t have made it 20 minutes so that wasn’t it and he was still working from the same 5 gallon of mix he showed up with. I bought my son in law an ms 250 (greatest non pro) saw stihl ever made and we’ve been limbing tops from 25 acres that him and my daughter had logged out to build a house. He showed up Saturday with a new can of gas filled with amsoil. I quickly dumped his can of fuel into his truck, told him the story and he ran off of my can all day. To this day, I can’t prove it was amsoil, but you won’t catch me using it and if I did, it would never be mixed based off of their claims. There’s obviously a difference between Joe public cutting a 1/2 ton truck full of firewood and a tree service running max rpm’s for 10 hrs a day in 90 degree heat.
HP2 is a very good oil. I haven't seen any weakness in it. Runs good, clean, cool, and smells good. Saber is also good 50:1 and 64:1, 710 at 45:1, k2 50:1, all good and smell good.
To those in the know: Many synthetics and blends 2T that I have used have similar burn viscosity rise that seems to be engineered in, like bean oil based formulas have. What chemistry is used to accomplish this?
No 100:1 at full power is going to be good, I don’t care what it’s made of or what it claims.
Amsoil fans will scream from the hilltops how great it is. I’m working through 2 gallons of husqvarna low smoke that I got on clearance. So far so good. With non ethanol and a good steel gas can I get a few years out of 5 gallons. We used to use 5 gallons every two days. Non ethanol used to be the norm but is now the exception. As far as mixing richer than 50:1…why? We never had a saw seize and beat the snot out of them. We had 025s that would last 2-3 seasons and were only retired because they simply fell apart. Not the saws fault when they were smashed or fell out of a bucket truck. Our bucking saws were 044s and 046s with nothing bigger than a 32” bar. Top handles were ms200s with no negotiation.
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“Not seizing “ is not “low wear”. But it sounds like you hit the right commercial balance of maintenance cost vs replacement life. I love Amsoil but never 100:1. I’ve worked on too many 2 strokes to ever prefer more than 32:1 for anything, really.
One weakness is that a pint cost a little less than a quart of any other synthetic 2T oil. Another weakness is that it's available mostly online.
I go thru about five gallons of premix in a year. Echo adds substantially to the warranty period when ya buy their oil and so that's what I do. I also run it in my 20 year old Stihl 270 but I hide the label.
Keep in mind than some of those may loose suspension with the gas below 60-50*F.
For sure I know that for Motul 710. A friend of mind runs his racing kart with it and told me that it doesn't stay in suspension below 60*F.
Motocross, go kart racing etc are sports primarily practiced during the summer, so some of the racing oil are not designed for lower temps.
And you know this how?
I'm not either.
I own about a dozen chainsaws, some worth more than my car, and I’m big fan of RedArmor. It cleans well and every time I tear a saw down, there is a nice oily film on all of the internal components. I run 40:1.
I used to run HP2 and it’s fine at 50:1 but any richer and it starts to burn dirty.
Amsoil Saber, Amsoil Dominator and RedArmor are my favorite 2 stroke oils.
I used to run HP2 and it’s fine at 50:1 but any richer and it starts to burn dirty.
Amsoil Saber, Amsoil Dominator and RedArmor are my favorite 2 stroke oils.
No two cycle oil really cleans. And this is from alot of inspection before and after with a bore scope.
I might have to disagree. I have only anecdotal evidence, but I have a lot of it. I buy, sell and rebuild a lot of chainsaws. Professional grade saws that get used by tree services and loggers, not homeowner saws that are used once or twice a year. Most of them come in rough shape with heavy deposits on the top of the piston, the exhaust port, and in the roof of the cylinder, and always the muffler. I pull the cylinder off of most of the saws I get, and at minimum I remove the muffler and spark plugs and inspect the piston, rings, and cylinder with a light. I’ve found that most of them, after 4-5 tanks of 40:1 RedArmor, are significantly cleaner than how they started. I’ve even heard some people recommend manually cleaning the piston and cylinder before switching to RA because it will remove so much carbon so quickly that there is potential for it to cause wear on the piston, almost like a gritty polishing compound.
You’ll often see black, oily liquid around the muffler port for the first tank or two. This goes away after a few tanks, presumably after the deposits have been softened and expelled from the cylinder.
RedArmor advertises that it cleans and removes deposits. I’m not sponsored or affiliated with Echo but it’s a great product that I’ve had an excellent experience with.
The only claim that RedArmor makes that I think is BS is that it is a fuel stabilizer. It might stabilize fuel to some degree, but I don’t trust it or any other fuel stabilizing product. I only use ethanol-free fuel in 2 cycle engines.
I've ran alot of Red Armor and I am going to have to disagree. If your seeing a wet muffler you have improper carb tuning, low load, or both.
In addition there is nothing in Red Armor that suggests it cleans.
Fuel stabilizing products like StabIl work. They improve the fuels ability to resist oxidation. However, they obviously cant improve the loss of volatility that happens when equipment is stored. I work in refining snd we actually add a anti oxidation similar to, but more potent than Stabil to certain refinery streams.
Lastly, people say all kind sof stuff about 2 cycle oils that just isnt true. It woukd be a full time job cleaning up all the disinformation on this board alone.
I have seen good 2t oil release deposits formed by inferior 2t oils back in the 80s, in a shop where we saw hundreds of engines every season. Sometimes in bigger flakes that would clog some muffler baffles partially. I’m not disputing your experience, just stating mine. I see the same thing today in my rotaries.
Ran some in a car four stroke also as experiment saw cleaner piston top after a few tanks at 1oz.
YMMV, but to me it’s a thing, and repeatable.
Ran some in a car four stroke also as experiment saw cleaner piston top after a few tanks at 1oz.
YMMV, but to me it’s a thing, and repeatable.
Not a thing.
I've seen guys claim something similar for years, but never any picture documenting it. It just doesn't happen.
For starters two cycle oils have very low levels of detergents or dispersents and neither really "clean" anyways.
The only 4 cycle oil that really clean is Valvoline Protect snd Restore. It has special chemistry to do this and two cycle oils dont have any such thing.
