The new federally mandated “safety” gas containers suck hugely. I spilled far more gas with mine than I ever did with the old-style ones. Eventually I cut off the complicated spout end and put a cork in it. Corks are available at your local hardware store.
2-stroke weed whackers are right up there with pushed reel lawn mowers as a great way to ruin your day.
Before I got smart and got an absolutely great battery-powered one from Sears, I got a lot of mileage from a spray can of “Starting Fluid”. A couple of squirts of that down the spark plug hole and if its got any spark at all it will start.
I once had a small engine mechanic tell me never to use that stuff as it might blow the cylinder head off. Yeah, right - I compared that advice with my 60+ years of experience and never went back to him.
I’ll second that bit about federally mandated spouts on gas cans. the first thing you MUST do is get rid of all that junk, and get a good funnel.
I really hope that, upon their demise from this earth, those parasites who dream up all these federal regulations find themselves relegated to the deepest depth of Hades. Actually, that would be too good for them, but oh well…
I’m grumpy so forgive my gruffness. Pulling the sparkplug because the engine is flooded is…crazy. A flooded engine will start if you wait 5-10 minutes. No need to grab wrenches. This is brand new? It sounds like it. My advice would be different if it was a year or two or 10 years old. If it is brand new and it doesn’t start… Here is the best free advice you will ever get… Take it back to the store and tell them to show you how to start it. Even Home Depot will do that. A smaller store will do it absolutely. Brand new, it should run…no problem. These things come poorly adjusted from the factory sometimes. If it doesn’t run perfectly, you probably need a carb adjustment. That’s not YOUR problem. Let the store who sold it to you do it. Now if it is a couple of years old…yeah…pull the plug a replace it, clean the carb…yada, yada. People… your advice to start repairing a brand new device is…crazy. Sorry again… This thread really annoyed me. Peace (And I get the irony)
Hey, I would have gone electric but Consumer Reports didn’t like any of them yet.
Righthereis the weed eater I’ve used for the last 10 years or so. only problems I’ve had was broken throttle trigger and worn out drive shaft. usually takes 5-12 pulls to start after winter, don’t remember how many it took to start when new. I never ever use full choke or it floods on me, always use half choke. I know its not the same brand but heck who knows it might help oh hell, just realized I don’t know what may be different after that long
Okay this might sound crazy but I’ve owned three 2-stroke gas trimmers and the starting instructions for all three sucked ass.
Pump that gas bubble way more than you think you need too. If the instructions say pump it 5 times pump it 10 times.
I have yet to flood one and I have never been able to start one by following their instructions. In every case the motor simply wasn’t getting enough fuel.
YMMV.
I like this. I have the same model, now in its second season, never a problem with starting. I haven’t used it in forever (trimming is my roomie’s job) but when I went to start it the other day I was like “wow that starts easy!”
Don’t worry about being a girl and going to the store to get them to start it for you. It’s not because you’re weak or stupid, it’s either because the instructions are bad or the product is bad. (Although you might not feel weird about it because you’re a girl, YMMV)
The real tragedy here is that it didn’t start when your ex tried it, thus setting you up for the “gee, I guess it just needed a bigger jerk” joke.
Well, having had a “Weed Eater”, a couple of Ryobis and a Toro over the past 15 years or so, the starting instructions have been dead-on, if sometimes complicated.
The one instruction that usually bites me is the most stupid one- flip the switch to “On”. No trimmer will start if that switch is flipped to “Off”.
After I’ve done that, then it’s time to go through the 7 primer bulb pumps, flip to full choke, 4 pulls (all pulls with throttle lever depressed, and grip-safety pressed), flip to half choke, pull until started, then immediately flip choke closed. And yes, that’s how you start my Toro.
I build and repair 2-stroke engines used in R/C cars, which are 100x more troublesome than
2-stroke yard equipment engines. I’ve never met a 2-stroke engine I couldn’t start. I’ve posted reference manuals on-line that prevented many hobbyists from jumping off bridges, or beating their children and wives and then turning to a life of drug abuse and alcohol abuse.
In the case of yard equipment, when you pull your arm off, you are doing so because you’ve failed to get fuel into the combustion chamber (or close to it), or you’ve failed to keep it there.
Priming must be done with utmost and deliberate action. If priming calls for 8-10 pumps of the primer bulb, you must complete 10 very deliberate and intentional presses of the primer bulb, with complete action each time. The tank’s lid must be tight. The unit needs to be in a stable position.
If your unit requires some initial pulls at full choke, go ahead and complete those pulls. Don’t expect the darn thing to start. You are just helping the fuel along, and there is no intention to have it start this way.
If you are then instructed to set it to half choke, you had better jump from full choke to half choke IMMEDIATELY (ok, very quickly) following the initial pulling you did at full choke. Failure to do so may result in fuel reverting back, and/or pressure being lost.
At this half choke setting which you’ve wasted no time in getting to, if the unit doesn’t start after 3-4 pulls, quickly react and completely press the primer bulb once, and proceed to re-pull at half choke. Repeat bold step until it starts.
Why: Because getting fuel into action and keeping it there is the utmost obstacle.
I’ve flooded the engines I run almost never, because when you are pulling and pulling, you know it just needs more fuel. And bumping up the priming at this point will not flood the engine. Further, a truly flooded 2-stoke engine should ‘hydrolock’ – i.e., it will not be able to compress the excess fuel and the piston will not move up. Your arm will come out of the socket before the engine cranks.
.
I escaped 2-stroke hell when I bought an electric trimmer. It has a new Li-ion battery and it uses only one half of the energy in the battery on both my blower and my weed eater for a typical lawn mowing.
But my relief from 2-stroke hell has been replaced with non-bumpitus. Apparently manufacturers thought that we were too overburdened to bump-feed the line when it got short so they invented the bump-less weed eater.
Except the damn thing just don’t work. So now, instead of being inconvenienced with having to occasionally bump the string feed I just have to simply -
- turn off the weed eater
- pull the battery for safety
- flip the tool over
- fiddle with the string
- give up and pop the cap
- unwind the string
- feed it back through the hole
- flip the tool
- put the battery back in
- turn it on
The 4 seconds I save by not bumping the string feeder has been replaced with a 60 second chore. Progress!
I gotta ask cause I’ve never actually seen a battery powered trimmer, are they the same length as a gas powered or are they short ones that seem like they’re designed for or by shorter people (corded electric) that are all I can ever seem to find in electric trimmers?
Do they make blade heads for battery powered trimmers? (I hate string cutters)
Got this thing called Google:
I just had the same problem with a brand new unit, ended up taking it back to the store and they gave me a new one. As soon as I opened the box, I realized that the “defective” unit had the choke label stuck on the unit backwards!!! New one worked like a charm.
An afternoon wasted…:smack:
Made in the USA, btw.
Most modern 2 stroke lawn equipment will not run correctly on ethanol blended gas, it does exactly as you describe. Look for a product called Trufuel at just about any store that sells equipment. No ethanol, perfect blend at the required fuel oil ratio. You can run a weedeater a couple weeks around your house on a 5$ can. You should never have to work on a weedeater, change the plug every year or two, throw it away after 3.
Trufuel good.
zombie or no
call the store and tell them. otherwise they will just sell it ‘open box’ and frustrate the next person.
2 stroke devices need to be stroked.
Oh, does anybody want an update? Years later, damned thing untouched, my husband can start it just fine but there was something totally wrong with the string holding in-ing mechanism. Took it to an authorized repair place who fixed it totally for free for me even though they had to replace the head - I couldn’t prove when I bought it or anything but they shrugged and told me they chalked it up to good customer service. (I’ve since bought a lawnmower from them because of it.)
I think most will run O.K. if you use 93 octane. From what I’ve heard, the ethanol will cause the components made of plastics/polymers to disintegrate, so it’s best to let it run out of fuel after each use.
What you did wrong was buy a gasoline powered weed whacker. They don’t work at all. That’s right never. Most of them couldn’t possibly work but people don’t know that because they assume they just can’t get them started. Those who are particularly adept with small engines might get one of the few that can actually run to get one started and use it for up to one season, but the next season it will never start again.
So if you need a weed whacker, buy an electric rechargeable one and a couple of extra batteries and you won’t have to worry about it again.
Actually, as long as my husband starts it it works great and just started up for our second season of actually using it. It just won’t start for me.