Did my first round of weed whackin Tuesday evening and had a small problem. Backstory: I had and used a 223L bought from Lowes for ~$220 for almost a decade with zero issues...just a great trimmer. Well, it ended up being stolen. I replaced it with a Husky 128LD which is one of the fancy muliti attachment jobs. I was less than impressed with the 128LD. Heavy and a little cumbersome to use...just didn't handle like the 223L. I bought two attachments with it. A cultivator (which worked OK) and a hedge trimmer. The hedge trimmer is why I have replaced the 128LD with another new 223L that I bought last fall for $250. The first time I tried to use the hedge attachment, it spun out the square "coupling" on the shaft. Off to the shop...$60 later I got it back in working order. Did some whacking with it and still needed to trim the hedge. Not 5 minutes into trimming it, the coupler broke again. That powerhead is now sitting in the back of the barn collecting dust. The coupler broke on the powerhead side both times. The moral (for me anyways) of that part of the story is: If you need a trimmer, buy a trimmer, if you need a cultivator, buy a cultivator, etc. Ended up trimming the hedge with some Fiskars hedge trimmers. Now, on to the 223L. I love these trimmers! Just find one and pick it up and you'll find my favorite thing about them.....lightweight! They are 25cc and right at 1hp. I run .095 line in it. Now the problem that I had Tuesday: Melted some plastic. Here's the story on that: My old 223 did not have a cat in the muffler, the new one does. I was trying to locate a non-cat muffler for it, then decided just to drill a new hole to bypass the cat. Well, didn't think about how the exhaust would come out of the new hole and melted a bit of the plastic muffler guard. It was just a bit of the "grid" on the cover, so I cut out the burnt parts and ended up with this: There was another reason that it melted the plastic besides my exhaust modification...too lean. These things are tuned for failure from the factory as far as I can tell. After 45 mins or so of running it and noticing the burnt plastic I decided that it was still running way too hot. Ended up giving the H screw 3/4 turn out and 1/4 on the low. Now runs nice & cool like the old one did. Hopefully it will hold up like the old one and I wont make the mistake of leaving it in the truck bed in a parking lot again. Still have a good bit of trimming to do. Pic of aftermath from the first session... Summary: 128LD = bad, 223L = good after some tinkering.
