Author Topic: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story  (Read 3311 times)

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Offline Bitburger

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Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« on: November 15, 2015, 08:21:59 am »
Hi Guys,

rainy days, still office work to do, time to present a project that recently got finalized.
 I am finally going to present my Dolmar 166. I am “collecting” the old Dolmar since 2007,
however it took a while to get a 166. Got it early 2014, however, I did not have much time
at home so far and therefore it took a little longer.

The 166 was not my favorite, although it might be considered as the most desirable Sachs-Dolmar
besides the KMS4. Therefore I was not biased and will add a few remarks at the end.

I picked it up at a friend’s house during my stay in late summer 2014:





Back in those days, I just did a cleanup and put some paint on the scratching marks. I use “alkyd” resin
paint for all of my saws. This type of coating is almost a hundred years old and takes up to several months
for a complete polymerization while exposed to air. The good thing is, it is a very thick paint that forms a
very resistive coating that always stays a little soft and handles mechanical force very well.






I fixed a leaking hose stem, pieces of silicon rubber told me about a former attempt. Well, degreasing is
very important, such as a good silicon compound, in this case „Reinzosil“!
 


MoS2-Grease for the worm…






This cover fort the oil pump is not a bad invention…




Well, black bolts, doubled disk, bolt strength class 12.something, I bet they came from an Echo!
Let’s go back to a new set of the original ones, 8.8 and electroplated. A black detail will be added later!



The starter was not fully complete and quite worn; I still had a very nice one for Dolmar 153. The insets
are the same so I just exchanged the whole inset. That powerhead and myself have the same year of
construction which is pretty nice…



Looks not too bad by now...


Hood polished...


Let’s add a few very nice gimmicks now! I still got a brand new nylon air filter, the old “roboflock” got exchanged.
Such as the original log spikes, the outer one was quite bent and their finish was partly gone. I got a pair of
aftermarket spikes from the US. Their quality is mind-blowing, they even have a little “nose” at the top, so that
they “clamp” into the paint of the saw. That means, they hold themselves while the bolts get assembled!
That’s smart! I do not mind that they are coated, let’s see how the black spikes will look like.



Finally, two very very special bar nuts from a very good friend: Might be from the late 70’s, they consist of two parts.
Their socket sits on the sprocket cover, an inset moves freely! This way they never grind on the paint! Such a
nice piece of machinery from such a long time ago! I wish they would offer sth. like this today! Well, the
emotional value of that saw gets higher and higher.



Already looks quite badass!


Piston has some signs of use, but all within normal range




The muffler, however, caused some headache. I had to solder all the way around. A washer had been used to
cover a small hole at the inner side of the bottom bolt. I soldered this washer as well, to get it gas-tight.
Although I filed as good as I could, this additional washer requires a second muffler gasket to level it out!
This was not the case in the past and those parts where heavily twisted. At least, the threads survived,
I think I spotted one helicoil in the cylinder but that’s fine.




The lower bolt holding the muffler was too long. I do not know how this could ever have fit, maybe there
where a few more washers on the outside that I forgot after I disassembled it month ago
Since I never worked on a 166, I could not believe that I would have a third of those muffler bolts.
While browsing my bits and pieces, I found one, right on top of some Dolmar 112-parts I once got
as freebees! That turned out to be very cool! 

 

Here I had to stop for now, as I said the bolts fort the bar need replacement. Their base is quite damaged,
for whatever reason. Fortunately, their seat and the threads in the crankcase itself are still ok and will
hold a new set that has to be glued in properly. I also needed a sprocket in .404, it came with 3/8.
I really like those black spikes!








and now the work that was done in summer 2015 and finished a few weeks ago:

ok, here comes the update. Took a little longer, finally I fixed all those little things.
Beeing almost a 2 year project, I am very happy now that everything worked fine,
and I also was quite surprised what a beauty the 166 actually is. The same proportions
such as the 119 and 133, considering the "design-ratio" between orange and black!
Not a joke, just compare to 114 and 153, they look different. 119, 133 and 166
just look the same, a linear scaling in overall size!

As I wrote above, in January I still had to exchange the bar studs and to find a new rim sprocket.
This has been done in May and worked nicely, lots of "loctite" and a smooth amount of torque:

New studs:



New sprocket:



The 166 is one of a few saws that actually look very nice even without an engine cover:



But now it comes to the tough part. It was already obvious that someone has tried to "repair"
a few things using some copper-colored kind of silicone rubber and all kinds of bolts.
The compression was not THAT great and after a nice chat with a friend, also concerned about
his 166 that still needs work, I decided to take down the cylinder...now look at that:




can you see it? The clip that holds the piston bolt ?

here with some help, the actual ring gap is between the green lines!
That means that one end of the rings fully sits in the "removal-nut" at 3 o'clock (red lines!).
This is a very dangerous situation since the ring can come off at high rpm!
It must be positioned at 6 or 12 o'clock instead!



Needless to say that the crankcase was full of black sticky parts of the old
cylinder gasket, it already had been removed once and re-glued with...yes, additional
silicone rubber. 

However, the rod bearing looks very nice! Another Achilles heel of the 166, here everything is in great shape


Having cleaned the piston as well (the black sticky gasket stuff also made it in the ring nut)
there is another tiny detail to find: If you look very carefully at that piston skirt, the score
on the front-left already starts on top of the piston! This was not caused by dirt or some oil carbon!
In fact, someone has once used a bar of metal to bloc the piston and caused some deformation of
the top edge of the cylinder outlet! Almost impossible to see by eye, the piston was able to tell
what caused the issue.



So I did my first "port-job" to remove any elevated areas closely above the outlet-edge :



And btw, backfire while starting is not always a sign of a badass-saw, sometimes it needs
a new key for the flywheel! 

Lets sum up:
The piston clip,
the piston rings (aftermarket, the black traces are the remains of a former gasket where pieces fell into the crankcase),
outlet edge and
flywheel key
required some additional action because someone messed it up in the past!



lets better go with these guys:



In fact, the compression is very nice now! Most likely the effective ring-tension
was lowered by those sticky residuals of a former gasket and this edge-deformation!
Fired up right away, no backfire.

Again some more work, also had to exchange the tank due to major leakage of gas...no pics because at this point,
I actually got pi...d! Seems that I was a bit optimistic on the first glance, I actually did not expect so many issues.
Maybe its just me (picky!) or maybe not...

While spending lots of time, I even got a new starter in between, as well as a decal
for the sprocket cover. This time, I actually drove the saw to some places to take pictures.
It has been 5 years that I actually put so much effort in just making some pics in the end, but in this case
it was worth it. That is a real beauty and a hell of a saw! Now I have some options for my screensaver :















Concluding remarks: I only knew the 166 from the web and of course I was VERY curious.
I even would say, the expectations were almost too high. Well, describing the character of
a 166, I somehow always thought that they were from 1985 and later. Now I learned that
the 166 was released much earlier, this one e.g. is from 82. This is pretty close to the
112-114-119-complex that was released in 1978. From that perspective it is quite
remarkable that the saw felt so much different. The heavy and unique Dolmar-feeling of
a 153 or even a 119 is completely gone. It feels much lighter and somehow quite advanced.
Indeed I always had the impression that I was working on a 120si. It just does not "feel" like
a "pure" colleague of 114 and 119!. It just seems to be in the same row as the later 115 and 120si.
A explanation could be that the 166 replaced the CT that was already sold since the 60ies. It even
was the upper end of the model palette at a time where the middle-class had already been replaced
twice (CA and CC by 122, 144 and later by 123, 133, 152/153). Maybe replacing the old CT was
prioritized for the European market before the 114/119 finally got replaced by the “modern” saws
such as the 115 that is still in production.

Last but not least, two technical details appear quite strange. First of all, the cooling fins are quite
coarse and small. Compared to a Stihl 070 it looks like a very minor cooling capacity. The fan is huge;
however, I do not think that they were sufficient to reliably cool the 118 cc-combustion. Is this the
reason why so many 166 nowadays have scoring?

Second, the manifold between carburetor and cylinder is already made from rubber. I think it is even
the only Sachs-Dolmar that has such a modern concept, normally used to damp the carburetor against
the vibrations of the engine. Regardless of this novelty, the carburetor itself is assembled to the crankcase
using a very massive construction of solid metal. I think this reverses the desired effect of damping;
it should have been assembled to the vibrational isolated part of the saw, such as the tank, that is right underneath…

In my opinion, those kind of “features” (don’t call it issues) are very typical for Sachs-Dolmar and
make this label so charming when comparing to brands that were “just perfect”
hope you enjoyed the thread  :)


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Offline aclarke

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166, picture story
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2015, 09:27:17 am »
Very nice. Thanks for sharing the details.

Offline Cut4fun .

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2015, 09:38:07 am »
Super nice work and thread. 

I have been all through those too.  Even split the oil and gas tanks to seal one once.

Offline mgr

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2015, 09:59:36 am »
Wow very nice 166!! Thanks for the pics.  ;)

Offline 3000 FPS

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2015, 10:26:52 pm »
Nice looking saw.   Great pictures and narration.   Are you planning on doing any wood cutting with it or keep it for a pristine example of that model.

   I have a 119, the saw runs great and is in pretty good shape.   
PP 505, 475, 445.

Offline mcbob

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2015, 04:25:46 pm »
As nice as the Dolly 166 is there's nothing better than the McCulloch SP118
Here with the rest of the bunch

I'm a idiot and removed the pic.
I am a idiot so my pics disappeared.

Offline Uncle Lee

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #6 on: November 30, 2015, 08:20:27 pm »
Very nice job Bitburger. The 166 is my all time favorite saw.
Don't know why but i just love em. The spike is a spike i designed
and sent the sketch to Bryce Stott "custom chainsaw parts on ebay"
I took an original and straightened the tips out. It's a very good spike
i just wish he had them coated the original color instead of black.


Lee

Offline jcsmith

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #7 on: January 07, 2016, 12:10:07 am »
That is sweet. Awesome photography as well. I've been wanting a 166 for quite a while. Maybe one day I'll find one. Love the attention to detail. Would love to hear it run

            Chris
Chris

Offline sharkey

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2016, 04:12:28 am »
Nice work Bit.  Are you going to run it? 

Offline Bitburger

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Re: Sachs Dolmar 166 picture story
« Reply #9 on: February 28, 2016, 12:29:27 pm »
Hi Guys,

thaks for your comments!
No, I guess I won't let it run anymore. At least until
I might have a few spare parts, not sure what part might be the most crucial?

wow, Lee, it was you who designed those spikes ?
That is just amazing, glad that you told me about that!
A blessing from the Godfather of 166, attached to my old saw, that's awesome.
Bought a lot of bits and pieces from that shop while still being in the States.

 

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