stevenf
Platinum Member
Sigarms, it sounds like you know way more then me about chain saws but we heat with wood exclusively so we cut a fair amount of wood every year and I've owned stihls for almost thirty years without ever having a problem. One day last year my little stihl quit and wouldn't go, I'm not great in the preventive maintenance department, I'm usually the try and fix it when its broke guy. It came back to haunt me and cost me 60 bucks and a few mechanics laughing at me to fix it. It was acting like what you describe. Take off the muffler and clean out all the exhaust areas you can reach maybe even compressed air blow the heck out of all of it. My exhaust system was clogged and after they cleaned it out and showed me how to do it I've never had another minute of trouble with it. Hope this helps although you did say that you had looked at something to do with exhaust and had some baked on stuff but what they cleaned out was from deeper then just the muffler off.
Steve
Steve