Poulan dealers are required to contact Husqvarna to obtain the tools, No longer available through distributor. MTD has stopped supplying the tools to their dealers as of last year. the reason given was the EPA was putting pressure on the company because they were allowing their dealers to adjust an emissions control device without having the instruments to test the exhaust. Yes there are tools being sold illegally on Ebay and the other sites. The EPA has started cracking down on dealers illegally selling the tools, as well as on the consumers for owning them.
As of my last knowledge the fine to the dealer for selling is $38,500 per tool/ per day. Joe blow homeowner can be fined $3,850 per tool/ per day.
the flip side of it is though some of those carbs are getting cheaper than the price of the tool to adjust them. I have come across complete new carbs for push mowers engines and some trimmers that the retail price on the carb is $13.00
Yeah, and we are really going to buy a $ 7,000 Co/Co2 meter for doing $ 30 tune ups on handhelds.
However there is much truth in Two-Strokes ending comment.
There is so much embedded pollution in creating short service life products the entire planet would be a lot better off with mandated and enforced minimum quality and service life standards.
If we replaced consummer durable items less frequently then we could afford to buy better ones and the factories could make reasonable profits.
A line trimmer running flat chat as over rich as it could be adjusted to till it blew up will never produce the amount of pollution that was generated in making it, marketing it & delivering it.
Eventually the overweight achne riddled scientifically illerate idiot moron bastards who run the EPA will cotton on to this, but by that time we will all be dead.
Hope the cockroaches make a better job of running the planet than we did.
I had this conversation with one of the self appointed planet savers down here not to long ago when they were adgitating the banning of the use of those filthy dirty smokey earth killing two stroke lawnmowers.
Works out it would take 13 years of operation at 50 hours a year before the two stroke's "dirty" exhaust equalled the difference in the embedded pollution between making the local all cast iron two stroke engine and the equivalent 5 Hp Briggs 4 stroke.
However the 5 Hp quantum engine only has an EPA certified life of 3 years and after 9 years there is no difference in the pollution between the two engines as the 2 stroke dose not wear any where near as fast as the lean burning 4 stroke. They stopped the test at 550 hours when it was becomming very apparent that the Quantum's exhaust was going to eclipse the Powertorque.
If the facts don't support your obsessions, change the facts.