Auto line feed strimmers?

[Harry Bloomfield]

Following on from my motorised brush cutter thread of earlier today...

I have been using it to try to catch up with the over grown bits of garden, using the auto line feed strimmer. It was just far too wet last year to do much.

I've never had much luck with these, any of them. This one worked for a short while before it flew apart leaving me to search through the long grass for the missing bits. Once back together despite being sure I had put it back together correctly it was reluctant to feed - one where you tap it on the ground.

I'm fairly sure its backwards threaded mounting bolt is a standard for this type of thing, so what do others think of these auto feeds?

Would a simpler manual line feed be better, quicker to use and more reliable?

[tinnews]

I've had no real problems with them, the heads do eventually wear out but that's only after a *lot* of use (we have 9 acres of varied land).

I have a really little B&D "reflex" strimmer which feeds line completely automatically, no bouncing the head on the ground. For awkward corners and close to wire fencing (which the big strimmer rips apart) the little B&D is excellent. I've had it for two or three seasons now.

My bigger strimmer is a Ryobi which has the "bang the head" feed mechanism and, so far, after a year's use that it fine too.

[Dave Liquorice]

I have a Ryobi but the bump feed doesn't. Normally have to slacken the spool holding bolt and manually waggle the spool around and pull the line out.

Which way do you wind the line onto the spool when refilling? There are arrows on the spool and I follow those with the line but are they refering to line direction or the direction to rotate the spool to refill it?

[Dave Osborne]

The arrows indicate the direction to wind the line on to the spool assuming you keep the spool still and wind the line on by hand.

Note that the arrows have a downward pointing tail. This actually graphically represents the line coming out of the hole, turning through

90 degrees and winding in the direction of the arrowhead.

Try to wind the line evenly in layers, don't wind it too tightly and don't try and wind too much on at once. Jam the end of the first line in one of the little notches around the perimeter of the spool to hold it in place while you wind the second line. Be careful about how you feed the lines into the holes in the spool cover to ensure that you don't trap or tangle them.

[Steve Firth]

Errm. On all of ours (Stihl) you wind both lines at the same time. Cut a length of line and fold it in half. Put the apex of the loop into the central notch on the spool and then rotate the spool to take up the line keeping tension on both lines. Once the line is wound onto the spool, secure each end in the notch and feed the tails through the eyelets. Drop the spool into place, pull both tails at the same time to snap them out of the notches and slam on the cover.

[Steve Firth]

Perhaps you should either (a) stop buying cheap shit or (b) learn how to care for tools? I use brushcutters on the farm runnng over an 8-14 hour day for seven days a week in spring. The number of times that any of them have flown apart is nil.

Without auto-feed the work would be more difficult than it is now. Although we do borrow a big (50bhp) brushcutter from time to time which uses a huge spool or braided wire rather than a plastic line. That's necessary to cope with brambles and other woody scrub.

With Autofeed you need to learn not to smack the button so hard that you break the spool, to clean the spool whenever you change the line and to use a line of appropriate diameter carefully wound onto the spool so that it doesn't jam.

Other than that, only a klutz could break a decent brushcutter.

[tinnews]

My spools don't require you to wind the line on like that. You cut a

5 metre length, poke it through a hole in the head and pull it so it's centred with equal amounts each side. Then you wind it into the head by turning the part you bang on when you 'bounce' it.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Dave Osborne wrote on 18/04/2009 :

I have never seen any instructions for these heads or for refilling them. The only way I have found to refill them is to hook a length of of the 'wire' onto the spool, drop the spool into the drum casing, threading the end of the wire through the exit hole. I then wind the spool around until the wire is wound fully back.

If I wind the wire around the spool out of the case, the wire flies out of control back off the spool before I can get it into the drum.

[Dave Osborne]

There is a knack to it. Once you get the knack, it's pretty quick. If you accidentally let an end go so that it unravels, just start again - it's worth it in the end, trust me.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Dave Osborne expressed precisely :

So you are the one with four hands :D

[Dave Liquorice]

That's what I do. B-)

IIRC from last season these are just a couple of arrows on the side of the spool with no relation to the double hole to loop the line through.

I put the center of a length of line in the double hole and wind both on evenly and together. Surely if you wind one on first then the second the first can't unwind during use as it has the second on top of it. The spool only has one "chamber" for both bits of line.

[Dave Osborne]

Ah, mine's a Ryobi as well, but it has two separate lines kind of like this:

like you have a different system. My bad.