Reel Repair by Alan Tani

Nothing good can come from counting my reels, and nothing in our marriage vows says I gotta limit myself 

Wife:  Enough yet?    Me:  Nope.     

Yeah, some of our weeds were close to 3', and the hillside is around 35° to the North.

We use a combination of the DR, Stihl, and Honda.

Best, Fred

Fred I'm at about the same step count for the day. I did our entire back hill which is about 1/3 acre and it usually takes 5-6 hours depending on how high and thick the grass is. I only do the back hill once a summer after the majority of it dries out.  The remaining 2/3 of the property gets mowed and weed whacked a couple times a spring or early summer. I've got about an hours worth of work left but I'm glad it's done for the year. 

Being that the trimmer is 10 yrs old it might be time to think about replacing and upgrading it to something with a little more power.  We use Stihl trimmers at work and they're great so I'll probably look into those. I love the RedMax which has served me well for 10 years and is lightweight. The powerhead is a little underpowered and now that we're back to "normal" winter moisture levels the grass crop is getting thicker and thicker so I'll need more horsepower.

I'll start looking into a new trimmer after the summer season ends to try to score a deal.

Tough enough to count rods but at least they're mostly in racks on the walls (except for several in a corner) reels have such odd shapes yet they fit together in a pile so well.

How many reels do y'all have? I probably have about 75. All users or eventual users.

Hey Fred, is the DR good for wacking tall grass on a hillside?

New spark plug always helps, PJ —-

Good work!

Sue ran the self-propelled Honda mower for 24,000 steps today —- which is about 10.8 miles.

I did about the same with the 8.75 HP DR self-propelled weed trimmer, and the straight-shaft Stihl weed eater.

DR was hard starting this morning —- so I put in a new spark plug.  Gas cap was also vibrating off because the O-Ring had worn out.  Went into the shop where I keep plenty of rubber O-rings, replaced it.  No issues now.  Worked great.

Just got out of the jacuzzi bath, Sue is making Mexican food for dinner, will hit the hay early tonight —- easy day tomorrow with Church.  Then another full day of weed-eating on Monday.  That should finish it off until we get back from the East Coast around 6/15.  We have needed to weed-eat 3 times so far this year.  Probably once more.

Best, Fred

Well I tried to use the weed whacker today and it ran great..... for about 5 minutes.

I pulled the spark plug boot off and the coil vibrated loose from the wire. So I grabbed my soldering gun and fixed that issue.

I figured while I had the wire off if pull the spark plug and inspect it. It looked burnt on the outside and I'm just assuming it's from the loose connection while using it the last few times. Ran to store and replaced and didn't have any issues for the next 3 hours!

Attached a pic of the spark plug

:0)