Well, thought folks might be interested in hearing about that crappy Ryobi I bought 4 years ago. Or was it 5. Anyway, the thing just keeps running great. It sat all winter without being started once. The tank was about 1/4 full. I filled it up with gas that was only a couple months old and it lit right up. Still runs great. Whoever put this one together sure did it right. Musta been a wednesday. The manual said to adjust the valves after every 10 hours running. So I've checked them 5 times now. Shoulda checked 'em 6 or more times but I forget. Only needed adjusting once. That was after about twenty hours. The string trimmer head felt kinda crunchy and it turned out that the bearings had gotten water in them. Though sealed some water still got past. Being a common bearing I will be ordering them from a local bearing house. But I still cleaned out the old grease and water and rust and put the head back together and will be running the old bearings until the new ones arrive.Thinking that the string trimmer head feed mechanism would probably fail fairly soon considering how much it is abused I bought a new assembly two years after I bought the weedeater. It's still on the shelf with the factory string wound around it. The original head continues to work well. I use string that has a star shaped cross section. It cuts faster and lasts longer than the round stuff. My neighbor uses triangular cross section string and he says it works great but I don't know if it is made as small as .080. I cut a lot of blackberries so durable string is important. The 4-stroke engine on this trimmer sure works great. It doesn't bog down and lose all torque when the rpm drops in a heavy cut like the two stroke ones do. This is especially nice when the saw blade is on and I'm making a really deep saw cut in alder. Carbide tooth skill saw blades can be had for about 7 dollars on sale around here and last a long time even when cutting in the dirt. But they dull so gradually that you don't notice how dull they really are until you put on a new one. I am going to try to change them more often. Especially since my neighbor bought me a bunch at a garage sale for 25 cents each. The saw blade works great for trimming tree branches and cutting down salmon berries. And surprisingly the teeth stay on when they hit a rock. That's all Folks. ERS
- posted
19 years ago