[QUOTE="fordf150. We no longer work on the MTD built trimmers and blowers because they are just too much hassle, you wouldnt believe the grief we catch over that one. I occasionally bend my rules and work on them, always get reminded of why we quit too. latest was a 1 year old Remington trimmer that they left sit over winter with gas in it, cleaned the carb, installed a kit. fired up and ran for a few minutes before the flywheel spun loose. in case you havent seen them...this is how the flywheel is held on
1/2 hour of my day and a $10 carb kit wasted......worth every penny to remind me why i dont work on junk anymore.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, most of the cheap gas powered string trimmers are garbage. Spend $100, figure on it being toast after a year.
However, battery powered trimmers, as ridiculous as they might once have seemed, don't suck that bad. Like this thing, which I just bought because it was $5 more than a new battery for my cordless drill.
This is trailing edge tech, NiCad battery tech. Also pretty hard to wreck just from throwing it in a corner, and forgetting it for 5-6 months. $40 on sale, sometimes you can get a better deal than that even. Will run maybe 25-30 min on a charge. With multiple batteries, and a speed charger, you get sick of running it faster than you run out of juice.
So, what can you get for the price of a "doesn't suck super bad" trimmer, say $150? This thing.
It's a fun device, and lays waste to weeds pretty good. Recharge is fast, and it runs for longer than I'd want to bother running it in one go. I would say it was the begging of the end for the cheaper gas powered string trimmers. So how long before you get something that will displace the higher end, say, 30-40cc trimmers? Probably gonna be 3-6 years. Which means, anyone producing gas powered string trimmers won't be wanting to put a whole lot of effort into improving them.