I've not used Makita personally.
Some trademen/women use them.
Seem well respected.
If that translates into garden tools, not sure.
My DeWalt are fine but their Strimmer was a disaster! Single rotten apple! Whatever the expression is🙂

Reviews you can trust and recs are your friend.

I've found 2 batts to be enough to run 4 tools.
The hedge trimmer hardly uses any batt. The leaf blower a lot more.
The DeWalt Strimmer (when working) needed 1.5 batts.
Their drill has enough torque to break your wrist! I've seen an unsuspecting handyman at our tennis club do just that!
The Toro Strimmer can do the whole lot in one charge. We have quite a lot of strimming!

Once you have the batteries and charger, other bare units can be bought cheaply.
I bought a new unboxed DeWalt drill for £30!

My son-in-law has Makita drills.
Fantastic.

I used Makita drills in my previous job. Very powerful and reliable.

I made a 'paranoia screen' for the record deck today. A right angle of Perspex (actually a bookend) cut to fit around one side of a Townshend isolation Pod (and so centred on the cartridge when the arm is in its clip), fitted to a similarly shaped piece of 20 mm bamboo ply with stainless-steel round-head screws. The base made from rubber sheeting from RS to stop it sliding and this was bonded to the ply using a spray contact adhesive. The sides of the bamboo are finished with Danish Oil, but not the face, as I suspected it would react with the Perspex over time.

The purpose of the 'screen' is to prevent accidental contact with the very exposed stylus / cantilever of the cartridge.

Sensible. That cantilever is horribly exposed!

After 7 years of good service my big Toro 30" cut lost drive to the right hand rear wheel.

Transmission!
New complete transmission around £182.
$150 + $10 tax of course..

I removed it, good Youtube videos from our American cousins on how to do that. Particularly one guy with goofy false teeth as his gimmick!

Would cost a pretty penny to do that at a mower service shop!

Nothing on the entire www about stripping the transmission and repairing!

No internal parts for sale etc that I could find either

I contacted a seller of the complete transmission. He assured me it was NOT worth taking it apart😂

Here it is



Being of 'that engineering kind', I stripped it down.

The halfshaft pulled straight out!
Shouldn't do that.
This have me hope for a simple fix!



They use silicone gasket sealant.
Took a bit of persuasion to pry it open.



I found a 10p plastic part, broken in half to be the cause of the half shaft coming out enough to disengage it from the drive.

Holding it in and engaging the drive lever, all worked as it should.



It's a retaining bush / oil pickup fan combined.
Designed to push on a retaining pin and snap in place and hold, at factory assembly in one tap!





Plan is to turn a brass bush with stainless steel pin or bolt to do the retaining.

I might add the existing fan back with the centre bored out and held on to the brass bush with a couple of small bolts that thread into the brass.
That part would just slosh the oil about, under no real strain.

I think that plastic part is way under speced for what it's doing
Especially in the long halfshaft side.
But 7 years is 7 years..
Not actually that much continual running time though. Compare to a car!

All the gear wheels, bearings etc are in excellent condition!

Question is, do I replace the other side with a similar solution now or wait for it to fail at some unspecified date🙂

Presumably, the plastic part is just holding it in place, not handling the torque (which would be done by the spline)?

Imperial? Is Toro American? I didn't know.

Would it be worth using gear oil for a little more slip protection?

Yes, totally yank! 🇺🇲

Worked out what to do with blades.

Bored out a bit.
The bolt that will hold the bush on the halfshaft doubles to hold the blade halves together.
The blades only spuddle in oil now.
The heavy lifting 😂 is done by the brass bush.





Now to find my 12.9 SS bolts - ah remembered where they are!

I'll be using automotive stud lock 8n that nylon nut on for good measure!