Due to spending the majority of our evenings working on wrapping up our flowerbed retaining wall, I’d let our yard get a bit out of hand. Finally, before the weeds completely swallowed the driveway, I broke out the mower and the trimmer and got to work. Halfway through edging the driveway, my string trimmer sputtered to a halt. A few frustrated pulls later, and it grumbled back to life, only to die a few seconds later. After a couple rounds of this, I packed it in – accepting that something was amiss with my trusty Echo.
Twenty minutes of research later, the internet said the answer was the spark plug. Or the air filter. Or the fuel filter. Or a fuel line. Or the carburator. How helpful <insert eyeroll here>.
Fortunately, ten additional minutes of research turned up an Echo tune-up kit with a replacement fuel filter, air filter and spark plug. Since this kit covered most of the bases (and since it was only twenty bucks at Home Depot) it seemed like a good place to start.
First things first, I popped of the cover over the air filter. This came off easily – just held on with an orange knob.
Next was the spark plug – popped of the spark plug boot and unscrewed the spark plug with a 3/4 inch deep well socket. Finally, the fuel filter. This required emptying the gas tank and fishing out the fuel line.
The fuel filter was pretty grimy looking. The spark plug was also not great looking (forgot to take a picture though). The air filter wasn’t bad, but at this point it seemed like it would just be easiest to replace everything (and not have to stash the extra filter away somewhere).
The new fuel filter seemed like a slightly different design, but it installed just fine; wedging into the line and held in place by a metal retaining ring.
With the new fuel filter installed, I poked the fuel line back into the tank. Then I tightened down the new spark plug, put the boot back on, and screwed down the air filter cover. One new tank of 2-cycle gas later, and the Echo string trimmer was ready to roll (er, spin?)!
Starting it back up, it FELT better. It seemed like it fired up more quickly and idling felt smoother. I realized that I prooooobably should have done this little tune-up sooner.
Look out weeds, here I come!