DUKE'S NIKASIL CYLINDER REBUILD KIT FITS STIHL 029 039 MS290 MS310 MS390 49MM

This is a difficult situation that I’ve sat with a while. I have bought many Dukes kits and directed others to do so. All installed no issue. When installing the piston into the cylinder on this kit, all seemed well until I pulled the rope and the piston was hung up. I took everything apart and a chunk of the piston was broken off, and a ring had broken. Usually you’d feel something that violent you’d imagine.

Contacted customer service to see what happened here and was pretty disappointed with the response there. Rude sums it up decent, useless and accusatory sums it up best. Just said I forced it after using their piston and cylinders in a couple 455 ranchers, and a mix of stihl saws. I let it go but after seeing numerous Dukes adds it started to bother me again. $80ish in and didn’t have my project done. Plus I don’t know what the customer support thought I was doing to force a piston. I imagine they envisioned someone going out to their shade tree southern carport and giving the ole piston a few slaps from a sledge hammer.

Ordered the cheapest piston and cylinder on eBay and suprise suprise, exact same thing as this kit to the gram. Weighed the pistons , weighed the jugs, looked at the machining. Same thing, but didn’t explode on install.

If the piston and ring doesnt explode on install, it seemed like a decent kit. Never had an issue with their kits before. And I never will have an issue with another one of their kits again. Or their chains. Forget it.

Kit was awesome, complete to do whole rebuild, perfect!

this was my first time build, the kit came complete with everything listed. From what I can tell the quality is good, no sharp edges, ports and transfers were well shaped and chamfered. I was able to swap out old for new and added about 9cc's to the saw, everything seems to work just fine, it starts and runs nice after initial tuning. I've heat cycled a few times but haven't had the chance to put it in some wood yet.