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Le Sueur VIA St.Thomas | Buy a quality machine they said... It'll last longer they said... You get what you pay for they said... That's what I told my dad anyway when he needed a new string trimmer. So he did- he got a good quality Homelite trimmer. It worked well at first. A couple years later it wouldn't start. A neighbor took it to his vo-ag class; they cleaned out a spider nest and got it running again. It got whatever gas and oil was around and it worked pretty good. That was 35 years ago...
Fast forward to last weekend. I pulled that same trimmer out of storage... once again. It had been sitting maybe 7 or 8 months? Maybe more? It had some gas in it (10% ethanol) but I figured I better top it off before trying to start it. I grabbed the gas can and topped it off with the same gas that was left over from last year as well. I pumped the primer bulb until gas was flowing through the carb. I put the choke on, gave it a pull and it fired right up!
It quickly died, but I turned off the choke and it started right up and went to an idle. And for some odd reason it ran better than I remember it running last year; it didn't hesitate when revving up, ran well at WOT and idled right down to the point where the trimmer would stop spinning. I guess I'm running this thing for another year I thought to myself.
I live in town now so the trimmer is a low use machine. Still, I think about getting a nice Stihl trimmer, or better yet, a Kombi unit with a tree trimmer attachment that I need about as much as I need a hole in my head. I tried my Stihl MS390 and it fired right up as well- same gas situation. My leaf blower did, too.
I do try to use Stihl oil mix all the time and I do occasionally throw in a shot of Sta-bil if I have some sitting around, but that's about it. What else can I do? I'm too frugal to go out and buy a second machine when the other one works just fine.. but I do think a new trimmer would be nice from time to time :^)
good luck -jim
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 trimmer (full).jpg (201KB - 312 downloads)
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Ethanol and small engines... grrrr...
