milwaukee-m18-fuel-string-trimmer

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 22:12:43 -0600

When both the trimmer and the edger failed on me the same day, I decided to bite the bullet and give an electric trimmer a shot. The main reason for this is even though we pay a crew to do the trimming now because it got to the point where an hour and a half as well as a full tank of fuel was was killing my shoulders.

But the main reason I need a working trimmer is the damn cement pond. I've tried being out there with the small leaf blower running when the guys come to trim. However, the fella doing around the pool moved so quickly that I couldn't keep all the grass out.

So, I decided to start doing this area myself, a little at a time and then blowing the grass back on to the lawn. That worked and I wound up not having to spend forty-five minutes with the skimmer net getting it all out.

That's when the trimmer died so I did the research and, since I recently converted all my cordless tools to Milwaukee from Dewalt and, since the M18 Fuel batteries and chargers I have are compatible, I stuck with Milwaukee and picked this one up at the local Northern Tool.

Right off the bat, I had a problem with it. Specifically, the rotor would stop turning after a couple seconds. Took me awhile to figure it out but YT came to the rescue. Turns out the "Go button" assembly was about a quarter inch in the wrong direction and when you tipped the trimmer into the working position, gravity would pull the cable out of the coupling. Got that solved and she ran continuously after that.

It also shipped with meager .080 braided line but the manual said .095 was acceptable as well so I threw the old line away and gave her twenty feet of the larger, square line.

Then, I walked over to the side yard and tested it around the railroad tie borders..HS was I amazed! The unit has two speeds but I quickly discovered that Low was more than fast enough. So I kept going and got all the way to the far side of the property before the 8AH battery it ships with died. It's slightly slower with the electric but it has more than enough power. There was also an unexpected bonus, the thing used very little line which is not the case with the Echo.

By the time the battery died it was almost dark so I charged it overnight and finished up yesterday evening. Bottom line, I am very happy with the trimmer and plan to order one of the new 9AH batteries which should duit. Still plan to keep the Echo trimmer in case I ever need to do the entire property in one day. But, after replacing the carburetor on both the edger and trimmer as well as a new ignition coil on the trimmer, I've given up trying to repair the 2-cycle gear and will have the fella I use for maintenance get them both running again.

And now I have to research the edger attachment. Saw it at Northern Tool but, the blade was shorter than the standard size and I figured it was because the unit didn't have the torque to run the larger blade. Nonetheless, I found that my skepticism about electric trimmers was unfounded and I need to find out if the same is true for the edger gizmo. If not, I'll have to keep the Echo edger in working order. I dislike the cut when a trimmer is used for edging plus, it would take at least an hour to do all of it with this trimmer.