Bar oil in the cold?

[strongsaw]

Winter bar oil is mostly for our benefit not the saw, unless your cutting in below 0 degrees F. If your saw is kept in an unheated space it could be tough on the oil pump when you first start it up. The oil pump is driven off of the clutch so if you let it warm up first, at an idle, you should not have any problems.

[strongsaw]

A lot of saws don't have clutch driven oil pumps, but are driven off the crankshaft and oil continuously.

[smh]

Few months ago bought an older Husky outta northern Maine. It had very poor, inconsistent oiling. Discovered the pump gear drive missing the "dogs" (that mesh into the clutch notches).
Over 30 years of cutting n bucking I never before gave a thought to changing oil for low temps. But my sawing is pretty mild compared to real loggers and never far from a warm shed. Then I read this thread. .. and bought some winter blend.

[bill m]

A lot of saws don't have clutch driven oil pumps, but are driven off the crankshaft and oil continuously.

So which " A lot of saws " are you talking about because I can't think of any off the top of my head.

[strongsaw]

Echo 370 and 400 are current models that are not clutch driven oilers. I think the current 670 and 8000 also are not clutch driven. Recent models 440, 510, 520, 530 were all crank driven continuous oilers.
I'm sure this doesn't represent "a lot of saws" but I can think of them "off the top of my head" because I own 8 Echo saws. I think Echo didn't have any clutch driven oilers until the last 4 or 5 years and maybe I wrongly assumed there were other companies with the same situation. I have a total of 28 saws, and they include Husqvarna, Stihl, Efco, Echo, Shindiawa, Redmax. All are recent [last 5 years] or current models. I suppose most have clutch driven oilers, but I don't know. I sure don't know about saws made 15-30 years ago that are still in use. I have a Poulan 3400 mid '80s, still runs good, of course doesn't have clutch driven oiler, has a manual oiler.

[Spartan]

I use the walmart 30 weight year round.  oils fine in sub zero.

[Engineer]

I used to religiously use Stihl winter weight oil anytime I was cutting at freezing temps or below, and regular weight Stihl oil the rest of the year.  Now I use whatever's on sale for warmer months, but I still use the blue-jug Stihl winter oil.  No sense losing oiler pump parts and etc. over a few bucks worth of oil.