A couple weeks back I bought a "running-but-fix-er-up special" MS460 chain saw for a reasonable price.

The main thing that needed repair was the fuel tank assembly, which is $160 for the genuine Stihl version, about $70 for the knock-off model shipped from the US, or even less if you're willing to wait for a shipment from China.

The guy at the local chain saw shop is death on non-OEM imported parts, though he didn't try talking me out of them once I made it clear that I wasn't going to try to make it his problem to make it work if I bought something that didn't fit right. "You cook it, you eat it" works for me.

Well, the tank came and I wasted no time in getting it onto the saw. Bolted right up.

Then the saw wouldn't start. An hour worth of goofing around, disassembly, and head-scratching and I realized the choke wasn't engaging. Why not? Well, there's a shaft from the control where you set the choke to the bellcrank on the carburetor. Maybe the genuine version was glass-filled, maybe the knock off version was made with whatever plastic was already in the injection molding machine, but in any event the one that came with the tank was too flexy and didn't make the choke engage.

I moved over the one from the old tank and everything worked great. Crisis averted.

Had a good evening of cutting up logs for the bonfire last night and today did some saw maintenance on the tailgate of the truck and... oh wait, that's gasoline, where did that come from?

Turns out that the fuel tank breather on the knock-off doesn't have a check valve in it, so when you lay the saw on its left side to work on the chain fuel is gonna dribble out. Great.

I pried the one off the old tank and snapped it into the new tank. Crisis #2 averted.

I'm pretty optimistic that the shakedown cruise is done, and hopefully the tank itself turns out to be reasonably durable. But this does serve to underline why the guy at the local saw shop is not a fan - at any kind of reasonable payment for my time, I'm definitely upside down on the $80 that I saved.

I think in the future I'll be going with the genuine parts...