I am finally bringing this gripe section up to date. 

While we were waiting on the Troy Bilt unit to be fixed, Randy went out and bought another Ryobi. It had a bigger engine and sounded like a great idea. It had all the same fancy attachments and special features but of course, they were not compatible with the older unit of smaller engine. 

Just try to use it. It vibrates so bad and is so heavy that it would take a very BIG and very STRONG person to operate the unit. Randy is but he can only run it for a few minutes at a time. It does not do well at cutting and I have given up on even trying. Randy had pity on me when I explained that I was sitting in the garden with a pair of scissors trying to cut out the sticker grass. Yes, indeed.

About Ryobi by Nita Holstine

  My gripe is with Ryobi. We had bought brush cutters and all the attachments from the company for about 10 years. The units didn't last more than two years each at the best but I put them to the most difficult of chores. We have lots of scrub oak and briars. I bent shafts and broke all sorts of inside pieces. Despite the physical distress the units cause, I was still glad to make progress with the dense forest.

  This last purchase of a unit brought a rude discovery. They had changed their standard unit to a puny model that could not run most of the attachments, not even the blade. I got about 3 hours of use from the unit before it fell apart. Even with only the thin line for cutting, the one most common problem of repeated repair which had been solved in the previous model, was not in the new model. Five hours of use tops.

  Customer service? Non-existent. Putting the money into repairing the unit to the status of light weight line trimmer just doesn't seem worth it. It is definitely time to change brands. No more putting money into that company. Goodbye Ryobi !