I had been working with these chainsaws from 1982 to 2010. They were called simply EPCH-3 (ЭПЧ-3) then. I know that now they produce more advanced version with a gear. We had a rotor with a gear-wheel together, teeth were straight.
The saws are almost wear-free if you take care of them. We used them all week on three-shift basis, the only off day was Sunday.
There was around 50 degrees of frost in the winter, before working we brought a cross-cutter in a building, warmed, and then he cut timber very quickly (if you leave the saw in the frost, machine oil becomes like modeling clay; at those time we didn’t have the oil for such temperatures). I think that the saw’s motor has a high quality and, as it mentioned before, it is necessary to care for bearings and an impeller of airflow. If an operator knows his stuff, he will send the saw to repairs when he notices some faults like abnormal noise and motor heating. Bad operators sent it to repairs when it was useless: the motor was burnt, the bearings got stuck, the impeller was broken and workless.
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