Snow Joe No Mo'

There's this company, see, that makes snow throwers called Snow Joe.

Their lawn and garden (non-snow) equipment is marketed as Sun Joe.

Well, they are dead to me. 

Dead. To. Me.

Back in 2017, when I moved into my latest house, I needed lawn tools.  I was sick 'n' tired of dealing with the hassle of gas-powered mowers. 

I had a Craftsman cordless lawn mower back in the 90s and I love-love-loved it. 

Since Sears is really not a "thing" any more, I did some internet sleuthing and came up with this:

A Sun Joe cordless mower with a rechargeable lithium battery.

And, since I am not a fan of string trimmers, I decided to go with the Sun Joe blade trimmer.

Well, the mower was delivered, assembled and it worked great. I was so smitten, that I heartily recommended it to my sister, when she moved into her new house. 

BUT THEN...

The next mowing season arrived.  I popped in the battery, pulled the handle and got about one revolution of the blade before it died! I checked the battery with my voltmeter and found that it was, indeed, fully charged.

OK, then. Maybe there's an internal fuse that's blown? Dirty battery contacts? Something else?

After disassembling the green plastic cowl, I could find no obvious fuses or loose connections.  Apparently the 40V battery feeds into a power inverter that supplies AC to the motor.

I shrugged and put everything back together.  I installed the battery and tried it one more time, just in case.

It started.

So I mowed the lawn.

I discovered that this problem would crop up if the battery went dead while I in the middle of a mowing session.  The solution? Take it apart and put it back together once the battery had recharged.

Last year, even the disassemble / reassemble trick stopped working.  

None of the local mower repair shops wanted anything to do with it.  No internal combustion engine = S.O.L.

The Sun Joe folks could not provide me with any repair centers, local or otherwise.  The website-driven "customer service" app was useless.

What could I do but buy a used, corded, Black and Decker mower off of craigslist.

I gave the still-functioning battery and charger to my sister who bought her Sun Joe on my say-so. It's been working fine for her, so, I guess, "Yay?"

 

Now, what about the trimmer?

Seems that the hard plastic blades wear down and need to be replaced.  OK, fair enough.

I went to the Sun Joe website and bought a three pack a year or two ago.

It became clear I needed some new blades this year.

Of course they cannot be had for either love or money.

Yep. Back to craigslist and back to those annoying string trimmers.

First-World problems run amok, I tells ya!