It’s nice that Satan’s Own Mower is working again. But no sooner had I done some serious mowing, and was waiting for HA to finish with the DeWalt string trimmer so I could clean up around the edges, than she came up and said it was making a funny noise.
It was, indeed. The DeWalt is our heavy-duty electric string trimmer that’s had a repair history of its own. First, the battery died much sooner than it should have. I didn’t have the documentation from our purchase of it (which occurred during the Great Chaos of our move here and my cancer surgery and transporting Luna the Big Dog™). Lithium-based batteries are really hard to get on the island, since they cannot be shipped by air and most shippers just have a blanket prohibition on them. We did find a replacement at the local hardware store, but I think we paid around $350. Then, almost every time HA used the device, it would have problems feeding string. When I looked online for a solution, I saw more than one video where some old guy was saying…
I’ve been using DeWalt tools for 25 years. They make the best. Great quality. But this string trimmer is a piece of shit.
The preferred solution seemed to be to replace the trimmer head with an aftermarket Echo unit. I did that back in July, and the thing has worked pretty well since. And worked a lot, since Satan’s Own Mower was out of commission and the little Black+Decker string trimmer really wasn’t up to the job, and then it broke. It’s a bad problem: the casing has failed so there’s no support for the main thrust bearing and Black+Decker doesn’t even sell replacement case parts. I’m still hoping I can fashion a shim from a beverage can to fix it, but it’s kind of iffy and I’ve been devoting more of my attention to getting the big equipment fixed. Besides, we had the DeWalt…
…which I disassembled today and discovered that there’s a gear case inside that has a plastic race for some ball bearings. The race is partially melted and it would appear that several of the bearings are missing, though I cannot imagine where they went. Astonishingly, the gear case is available as a replacement part from several online parts suppliers. Unfortunately, they all seem to use the same white-label web shop software that conveniently omits “Hawaii” from the list of states from which you must choose when entering your address. This, even though they ship with USPS, which will deliver to Hawai’i under the same terms as to the rest of the US (with the exception of the aforementioned lithium batteries).
I was going to transship via my father-in-law on the mainland (as I did with repair parts for my ebike). Then I found a place that used a different checkout process, and they’ll ship to Hawai’i, but they did say that they’re out-of-stock on the part which will add another 2-3 days. We’ll see. I tried re-assembling the trimmer after having removed the two or three pounds of grass that had packed inside it (no, my neodymium magnet says there were no ball bearings hidden in the grass). I carefully placed the bearings in what was left of the race. Alas, there’s too much play for the drive gear to stay engaged with the shaft gear, so no dice. We’ll just have to wait for the part to arrive, and in the mean time I’ll try the beverage-can hack for the B&D trimmer.
I should call out a success. There was a gasoline-powered standard (not riding) mower left on the property. It’s a Honda, and though it didn’t appear to have been used for a long time (for sure at least three years) I was able to start it and fix a simple linkage and it works. Particularly with the rock walkways that I’ve added around the house, it’s a lot easier to do some of the close-up mowing with a standard mower than with a rider.
I’ve avoided mowing lawns (and maintaining the requisite equipment) most of my life. I’m making up for it now.
—2p