Teach me about Weed Eaters

I know nothing about weed eaters but I really need one. I don't have a lot of area that needs weed eating at the house basically along a garden bed and a bit of fence line. Are the basic gas ones any good? What about electric?

if you dont have much to do and you dont mind the cord i would go electric.......no maint, it can sit up all winter with out getting gummed up.

I vote 2 cycle straight shaft for serious stuff. Mom and dad have electric and they are o.k. for little stuff. Brother got a 4 cycle and hates it.

After struggling with three different gas trimmers, I purchased a Black & Decker battery powered trimmer. Love it.

I have the same. If all you do is light grass around the yard, cordless is the way to go. If you have heavier stuff to do, spend the money on a decent 2 stroke. Mix opti 2 oil at 75-1 and you should never have any carb gumming up, or fuel related problems. Opti has a fuel stabilizer in it. I leave it in my chainsaw, and 2 stroke generator year round and have never had a problem starting any time during the season.

If you run a proper atmosphere destroying mix (32:1) the oil will keep the gas from gumming up bad enough to require disassembly, just a bit of fiddling to get it running and blipping the choke to pull the junk through every spring.

Empty the gas and run it dry every time you put it away. I have a craftsman with the bump head - still workin' great after several years now.

I've had an Echo for about 5 years that's holding up very well. I got a newer model bump-head for it a couple years ago and try to use good quality .095 line.

A key to weedwacker happiness. Watch an actual landscape/lawn dude run one sometime; they use very little throttle. Since I started using it correctly I consume much less line, don't dig bald patches into the edge of the lawn, and it goes faster and easier.

Very little throttle when against stuff conserves line and reduces damage. When I'm going at some heavy stuff, it's full throttle. You HAVE to run those things at full throttle every once in a while.

Go to Lowes Depot and buy either a Stihl or Echo. Both are good and will last you the next decade with only the slightest of care ever needed. I see both brands get 3 or 4 years of commercial use with very minimal work required.

If you want to try out the electric thing, make sure it has the power to really cut, and that it has 2 twines, not just one. If you have one diddly little yarn hanging out there, you aren't cutting anything. Go .90 as a minimum. If it can't run that, leave it on the shelf. Don't bother trying to replace the head with one that will accept bigger twine, because the unit itself won't have the power you'll need to do any actual work.

Battery powered all the way!! The newer bigger batteries run a long, long time and they have all the power you need says the guy who just got back from doing all 3 acres with hundreds of trees, a pond & lots of high or thick grass/weeds

The time you save from having to fart with a gas trimmer will be enough to build your dedicated race car.

I got a vminnovations.com ryobi refurb. Works great. Sometimes a pain to start, but easier than my friends stihl. I run it dry every time I put it away. I just got a pole pruner for it. I think the trimmer was $65 on sale.

I have a 35 year old Snapper curved shaft that finally gave up last season. It needs at least a base gasket (or whatever equivalent it has), so I'll dig into it this winter for grins. It goes with my lawnmower of the same vintage, which sat for 10 years and started on the 3rd pull with literally nothing more than fresh gas in the tank.

I got a fairly new Ryobi from my deceased grandfather. It works well enough but the spool drives me up a wall. Now the spool cup has worn a sharp divot that breaks my line every 3 minutes. It barely avoided me smashing the engine side into the sidewalk like a sledgehammer. I'll see if I can't smooth out the cup with a file or some paper, if not, it better be a cheap part or Ryobi's losing a user.

All that said, if I didn't have a city double lot on a corner, and I just had a small yard to maintain, I'd go Lithium Ion powered and never look back. Get one with batteries that can interchange with your other cordless power tools and Bob's your uncle. If I was going to buy gas, I wouldn't screw around with anything but Stihl or Echo two smokers.

I have an Echo straight shaft that handles everything I can throw at it. I believe in overkill when it comes to lawn tools, that way you never have to beat on it to get the job done and they last longer.

I have a small place (.3 acre) and not much trimming and my black and decker electric job has served me well for 3+ years. No maintenance, quiet, and lightweight. No complaints here.

Small(ish) yard doing what you state, electric or battery. Your choice. The electric w/extension cords would be cheaper but can't argue the convenience of battery. I've got 1 acre and went gas, Used an electric for years at my previous house with small lot. With this house, I started 12 years ago with a Ryobi that takes attachments, made sense to me to buy attachments and only maintain one motor. Now have about every attachment made for them and replaced the Ryobi with a Toro. Love it.

I have had a number of different 2-strokes and sooner or later they would get gummed up and quit running. So I tried an electric one. I still have it as a back up but seldom use it.

I currently use a Craftsman 4-cycle. No more gum up problems, just run it out of gas at the end of the season. Biggest reason I like it is that I have a lot more edging of sidewalks and driveways to do than actual weed eating. And I have a edging attachment for it.

I finally decided to abandon gas trimmers. They are the bane of my existence. I hate them with such force that they simply cease to function in my presence.

recently bought one of these on the recommendation of someone who used to work at Popular Mechanics.

http://coreoutdoorpower.com/products/

Not cheap, but absolutely amazing. Uses the same string your gas jobby does, tons of power, torque and capacity. I'll never look back.

jg

JG brings up a good point. The wire, string or whatever you want to call it can make your day easy or hard.

The stiffer your wire (insert joke here) the better your day.

1) a big, stiff piece of wire cuts better than wimpy stuff so, YES, size does matter.

2) you need something that's easy to restring

3) better yet look for one that will let you do away with wire altogether and get those plastic blades. Not all brands have replacements.

I use one of dad's echo trimmers.......one is curved and the other straight. They're easy to start and easy to use......they aren't that quiet though. But they will cut very well with the heavy cord we use. The wind up heads aren't that hard if you get the knack of them, and I would never recommend blades......its more dangerous if it were to break.

carguy123 wrote: Battery powered all the way!! The newer bigger batteries run a long, long time and they have all the power you need says the guy who just got back from doing all 3 acres with hundreds of trees, a pond & lots of high or thick grass/weeds The time you save from having to fart with a gas trimmer will be enough to build your dedicated race car.

Um... as someone who works at Home Depot in the repair department, I have to say that the battery powered trimmers work GREAT.... for the first five times. When your battery stops taking a charge, or the motor dies and melts the plastic housing, you'd better have a perfectly legible receipt AND have the warranty registered via a 943-step process, and even then you will most likely have to fight to prove that it wasn't customer abuse.

Pony up and buy a good Echo straight-shaft trimmer. DO NOT skimp and buy the Ryobi or Homelite (same thing). They are the worst thing I have seen since Niki Minaj. You'll get two uses out of them and the shortblock is toast. Done. Period.

Most of the Echo products have a 5-year warranty and you'll never use it. If you do have to use it, chances are they'll just give you a brand new one and apologize for the inconvenience.

mikeatrpi wrote: Empty the gas and run it dry every time you put it away. I have a craftsman with the bump head - still workin' great after several years now.

Very strongly disagree with this when it comes to newer trimmers. The new ethanol blended fuels along with cheap rubber diaphragms and seals means that those parts can basically never see the atmosphere again. Ethanol hardens and dries out the soft parts. Within hours of being exposed to air they are useless.

Always use stabilized fuel in yard equipment. You never know when your last use will be. Leave it full. Any air space means humidity. Ethanol absorbs and holds moisture and the result is corroded aluminum and brass as well as cracked rubber.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: If you run a proper atmosphere destroying mix (32:1) the oil will keep the gas from gumming up bad enough to require disassembly, just a bit of fiddling to get it running and blipping the choke to pull the junk through every spring.

^^^ This. I don't even go that far, just 40:1 is fine. Most newer 2-stroke oils have stablizer included in the formulation anyway.

Running a 2-stroke with too much oil won't damage anything, it will just make you replace the spark plug every 3 years instead of every 4.

my Worx WG-151-SU battery powered deal is three years old now, and I've used it exclusively on my 1/2 acre every week. It's not a bump head, it comes out just a bit every time you start spinning, and I have yet to run out of string from the first batch they sent with the trimmer. I have one battery, and only once in a great while (maybe 2-3 times a season) I'll do something hard enough as to drain the battery before I am through. I've noticed no degradation in battery or charger performance, and it's light and it changes shape and such easily to do a few different things (even has little wheels so it can be an edger!).

EDIT: O did have them replace the first battery under warranty within a few months as it was obviously defective from the box.

I'm never doing gas again - I wish the mower was electric now.

In reply to JG Pasterjak:

You have a Volt, so does your opinion really count

I got to be honest I am leaning towards electric but how much will it end up costing me for a decent electric?