happiness is another small engine

I am a bit of a motorhead. When it comes to certain power tools, internal combustion engine is still the undisputed king. This is generally true with garden and farm tools.



Ever since I owned my first home, I had thought keeping a lawn is counter productive. In my current house I only have a small strip of grass in my backyard which I rarely mow. The only reason it still exist is i have yet to decide what to convert it into. On the other hand, a chainsaw and a leaf blower are necessity where there are many trees. I had put off buying a replacement when my 20 year old McCullough leaf blower broke down. I tried to repair it and diagnosed the cause to the diaphragm in the carburetor deteriorated from age. I could not find the carburetor rebuilding kit for it. Eventually with the autumn near I have been shopping for a replacement.

I have been shopping for a good quality consumer leaf blower. These days every brand makes 2-stroke blowers and the designs are very generic. often share a lot of similarities. Walk into a big box home improvement store one would find 4 or 5 gasoline blowers ranging from $90 to $150.

I came across the Makita BHX2500CA on Amazon. It is one of the few 4-stroke blowers in the US. I begun doing research online in attempt to gauge how good it is. Unfortunately there are very few sold. Normally for small gardening tool few would consider 4-stroke because 2-stroke typically wins in the horsepower to weight ratio. Comparing the specs do show the Makita has lower CFM than 2-stroke blowers of similar engine size. However I have a healthy skepticism on advertising specs. I set out to be cautiously careful with the Makita. I also consider some of the best 2-stroke offerings. Of the 2-stroke offering, I like the design of the Stihl DB55.

I have never own a Stihl product and heard a lot of people swear by them. Years ago I had came close to buying a Stihl chainsaw but their exclusive dealership and selling at fixed price turned me to Husqvana. This time again I consider the Stihl BD55 which is a very popular and well regarded blower. I do like the light color plastic and very distilled design. I have a chance to play with my neighbor's. The DB55 is certainly a very good blower.

Strangely shopping for a blower I notice the common use of 2-cycle and 4-cycle terms instead of 2-stroke and 4-stroke. I thought I must have been living under a rock with all the recent progress but calling them cycle make no sense at all if you know anything about thermodynamics. For 2-stroke engine, a complete combustion cycle consists of 2 strokes, and for 4-stroke engine, there are 4 stroke in each combustion cycle. I can only infer that for some pervert reason to be "politically correct", the marketing people decided that the word stroke is to be avoided. Marketer will always be marketers.

As I research on 4-stroke blowers there are a few other lesser brands like Troybilt and Sears which the appearances are identical - I suspect both are built by someone else and branded. There is also one by Ryobi, but it does not look all that well made.

Doing a little bit more research I found out Honda do make one also but is not sold in this country. The Honda is sold in Australia for $499 which converts to $345 USD. I used the pricing of the Honda as a reference for the worth of the Makita. Do note that Makita only make two blowers. The handheld BHX2500 and a backpack bigger unit. Both has Makita's MM4 engine design. I have very high regard for Makita, and since there are only models in the lineup I expect them both to be very good.

Makita MM4 promotional video



just for fun, apparently in Ukraine sex still sells tools - or better put, it is still PC to sell tools with sex


the Honda is sold in Australia for $499 which converts to $345 USD

I have not been aware of Makita being regarded as design and manufacturing of small gasoline engines. I initially assume they must be made by someone else and branded as Makita. Seeing their of the MM4 4-stroke engine promotion suggests these are Makita's own. Before long, my initial view of the blower's 20% price premium over other quality makes and model actually seem cheap. I was impressed the extend of the technical documents including parts breakdown.

7800 max RPM - not bad for a single cylinder 4-stroke engine

Stihl, on the other hand, do not publish service documents. Stihl insists that all services should only be carried out by the authorized dealers.

unlike many hybrid engines that are 4-stoke, but requires the used of oil mixed fuel, the Makita MM4 engines are true 4-stoke with a tiny oil sump of 0.089 US quart

3-ring piston and crank with counter weights; there is nothing cheap with this Makita blower

those valves must be miniature! for reference, a small liquor shot glass contains 30cc and this engine is only 24.5cc

Inspecting the parts breakdown of the Makita really helped me making the purchase decision. I went ahead and made the purchase on Amazon.

a few days after my order the new toy arrives from Amazon; it is assembled in USA

Inspecting the blower closely I was very satisfied with the details of the design as well as the construction quality that I would expect from Makita.

i carefully fill the oil sump with 0.089 US quart of synthetic oil; the fuel tank capacity is generous

every aspect of the blower is high quality and design typical of Makita; the blower air tube and nozzle clearly are more substantial than most other brands

I have been using the blower for a week now, and I am very pleased with my purchase. It starts very easy and unlike 2-stroke engine which requires some time to warm it is ready to run full throttle as soon as you deactivate the choke. I have let the engine run at lower RPMs to let it break in a bit.

So with most blowers in the price range all claim over 400 CFM and the Makita's 356 CFM will this be a wimpy toy blower? Not a bit. Even at idle there is plenty of air. At full throttle there is no shortage of power for my applications. One of my concern was the ability to blow off pine needles off the very worn aggregate concrete slabs and the Makita has no trouble doing that.

Yesterday I took the Makita to my neighbor who has the Stihl DB55 for a side by side comparison. The performance of the two blowers are very close, from idle to full throttle. The Makita is significantly quieter and emits cleaner exhaust fume. Because of  the crankshaft counterweight of the 4-stroke engine the Makita has a noticeable gyroscopic effect but it does not hinder the operation of the blower. One thing that is very noticeable, with a lot of use the fuel level in the tank has hardly fallen. The low noise level make the clean up work much more pleasant.

Knowing that it has very comparable performance with the Stihl DB55 makes me very happy with the purchase choice. It is worth noting that the Stihl has a 27.2cc engine while the Makita's is 24.5cc.

in my previous blower i found the flat end nozzle work well in certain tasks, like corralling a big pile of leaves; i have to purchase this separately from Amazon

a problem with the flat end nozzle is, it requires an extension tube as shown in the picture, and Amazon's buyer (staff) blew it - they don't sell this; I contacted Makita and was able to order it directly from them

the extension tube finally arrived; it adds considerable length to the blower so that you don't have to bend your knees to level the flat nozzle parallel to the ground

Makita's designers did not overlook even the minute details of the blower tube system, the bottom of the flat nozzle rest perfectly when the blower is left on the ground

paying close attention to the flat nozzle one would notice a slight rotation offset CCW of a few degree when the blower is rest on the gound. what gives? once you pick up the tool, the sight center of gravity bias due to the weight of the motor cause the blower to rotate CW the same amount in opposit direction and the flat nozzle is perfectly parallel to the ground