I have the exact same saw and it is doing exactly the same thing. I would bet the problem is the start capacitor but I have been to lazy too fix it. Mine has gotten bad enough that it won't start at all if the motor is loaded even a little. What I do is remove all tension on the drive belt with the little crank handle and then power it up. It spins up almost instantly with zero load. Then I slowly tighten the drive belt to engage the blade. Once it is up to speed, it has as much power as it ever did. Just a couple of weeks ago, I used it to resaw some 8 inch wide red maple.