In uk.d-i-y Stephen wrote:
On Tue, 1 May 2018 21:35:36 +0100, Tim Watts
wrote:

Had one a long time ago - stripped the gears in one of the attachements
(pole trimmer IIRC) because they were nasty and plastic.

That's a shame, I was looking forward to buying a new toy

Does anyone make one with metal gears or is it a case of building down
to a price/built-in obsolescence?

My 4-stroke Ryobi Expand-it head is now 5 years old and still going
strong. It gets fairly heavy use here on our 9 acres powering the
strimmer, pruning and tilling attachments.

The 4-stroke head does suffer from 'mixture drift', you need the
special 'Pacman' tool to adjust the mixture. It always seems to drift
towards a weaker mixture which makes it feel as if there's something
seriously wrong but all it needs is a little tweak of the mixture
screw. Mine seems to have settled down now and hasn't needed
twiddling for quite a while.

The other issue is that the timing belt sometimes falls off on these
4-strokes. I don't think it's due to wear or anything, just a rather
marginal design. I've added a little bit of plastic which stops it
drifting off and haven't touched it for years.

--
Chris Green
·