Tiger, I was talking about a particular grade of whipper snipper, not all of them. Some of them have features such as half-cranks and tin-pot kill switches that make them both unreliable and unpleasant to use. Also, I do not regard the carburetors as one of the sub-standard parts of them. They do give carburetor problems, but those are often due to abuse (usually dirty fuel) or just the limited life of diaphragms.
It also seems to me that even fairly decent bent-shaft whipper snippers usually have rather short lives due to lack of lubrication of the bottom bearing of the inner cable, and crummy feed spools.
Beyond that, it is mainly a problem of them being too fiddly and sensitive to be usable by the people who are the target market for them. Many owners will not measure the amount of oil they add to the fuel (if they add any oil), or keep dirt out of the fuel tank, or wind the line onto the spool properly, or even put them under cover when they don't use them for a few months. I have one that had its bell-housing broken in half after a very short period of use because the owner chose to kneel on it while he pulled the starter cord. Since we can't change the people who use them, the only sensible approach is to make them so that those people can use them successfully. Both Briggs and Honda have taken that approach, with reasonable success.
