BU-KO 52cc Petrol Strimmer Review – UK Tested

I’d not got round to replacing my old strimmer for the best part of a year, mostly because every time I looked at a new one I talked myself out of it over something daft. This time it was the price of a 3-in-1 that finally won me over, line head, blade and a wire brush all on the one shaft, for not much more than a basic line trimmer on its own.

The BU-KO 52cc turned up flat-packed in a box that rattled a bit more than I expected, and the first thing I did before touching any of it was read the paperwork, which turned out to be more useful than usual.

Overview and first impressions

Out of the box you get the power unit with the bull horn handlebar, a lower shaft with the guard and spool ready to go, a separate three tooth blade, a double shoulder harness, a tool kit with a spark plug wrench and an Allen key, a pair of gloves, and the instructions. Washers and the retaining nut were already sitting on the hub when I unpacked it, which the leaflet specifically mentions so you don’t go hunting for parts that were never missing in the first place.

What struck me going through the paperwork was how many different names are attached to one machine. The box and the website both say BU-KO. The actual instruction manual is issued by a distributor in Cookstown, and the support videos it points you to live on a completely different website again. None of that affected how the thing ran, but if you ever need to chase a part or a warranty claim, it’s worth knowing you might end up dealing with a name that isn’t the one on the box.

Fully built it’s a fair bit lighter on the bathroom scales than the heavier 52cc machines I’ve used before, coming in dry at 8.5 kilograms before fuel and harness, though it never felt quite that light once it was loaded up and on my shoulder for a full session.

Specifications and scores

Here’s the bit that actually worried me a little. Every bit of marketing copy on this machine, the website, the listing, every retailer repeating the same line, tells you to mix the fuel at 25 to 1. Open the actual instruction leaflet and there’s a boxed warning before you get anywhere near assembly telling you the fuel must be mixed at 40 to 1, and that starting it without the right mix first will wreck the engine beyond repair. The spec table further back in the same leaflet says it again. Same company, same machine, two completely different ratios written down in two of their own documents.

I went with what the manual told me rather than the website, on the basis that the people who wrote the warning about wrecking the engine probably know the engine better than whoever wrote the product listing. It’s started and run fine on that ratio all season, so that’s what I’d trust if I were buying one of these myself.

How it performed in our tests

Assembly took longer than it should have, not because any single step was hard, but because the shaft joint wants the internal splines lined up properly before it’ll lock, and the first time I tried it I forced the locating pin home without quite getting that alignment right. It went together eventually, but the leaflet’s own warning that the machine won’t run right if the splines aren’t seated correctly turned out to be exactly the problem.

The hub itself is reverse threaded, both the spool and the blade tighten by turning anticlockwise, which took some getting used to but at least it’s the same direction for both attachments rather than one each way. Lock the shaft with the Allen key through the hole in the collar, wind the nut on backwards from what your hands expect, and you’re away. The leaflet also tells you to have a look through long grass and under anything bushy before you start, in case something’s living in there, which is a fair point I’d not have thought to check myself if it hadn’t said so.

The blade went through the bramble corner at the bottom of the plot without much fuss once it was properly seated, though on my first attempt I’d not got the washer sitting quite right under it and the whole thing buzzed in my hands far more than it should have. Pulled it off, reseated the blade centrally in the washer, and the vibration disappeared completely. That one’s on the assembly, not the machine, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that catches people out who skip past the bit of the leaflet about washer placement.

Fuel, running time and the three cutting heads

Filling the tank is straightforward, no more than about 80 percent full so there’s room for the fuel to expand once the engine’s warmed up. Priming is six to eight presses of the bulb under the air filter housing until you can see fuel moving, choke up for a cold start, and the bit I’d not seen on another strimmer before is bracing the shaft against the ground with your foot while you pull the cord, rather than holding the whole unit down with your free hand. Took me a session to get used to it, but it works, and mine has fired on the second or third pull pretty much every time since.

Stopping is a longer idle than I expected, thirty seconds with the throttle released before switching off, which gives the engine time to cool rather than being shut down hot. The leaflet is also stricter than most about working time generally, thirty to forty minutes on, then a proper ten to twenty minute break, and keeping the whole day under two hours total to avoid the kind of repetitive strain that creeps up on you rather than announcing itself. It even tells you to keep the noise to between nine and five out of consideration for the neighbours, which is more thought than most instruction leaflets bother with. I’ve not always stuck to any of that as closely as I should, particularly on the day I was trying to get the whole plot done before rain came in.

Topping up the line is a tap-feed system, give the spinning head a light bump on hard ground at full throttle and roughly an inch more line comes out each time. Tap it in long grass instead and the engine bogs down rather than feeding, which I found out the slow way on a patch I should have cleared with the blade first. Replacing the line itself means popping two clips to get the cartridge out, winding fresh 2.4mm line onto both spools in the direction marked on the body, which is a five minute job once you’ve done it the first time and a much longer one the first time you haven’t.

Performance and limitations

The harness splits opinion a bit. It’s a proper double shoulder design with eight adjusters and a thigh pad to keep the shaft off your leg, and once it’s set it does its job, but getting that thigh pad sitting comfortably took some fiddling and I’m not what you’d call a small build. Anyone slighter than me would likely find it more of a faff to get right.

Maintenance is on a fairly demanding schedule if you read the leaflet closely. Spark plug gap wants checking monthly and the plug itself replacing every hundred hours, the air filter wants a clean before or after every session and weekly on top of that, and the gearbox grease point and carburettor idle setting both want a look on a weekly to monthly rhythm depending how much it’s been used. None of it is difficult, but it’s more frequent than I’m used to on a tool this size, and skipping it shows up quickly in how it runs.

It’s worth saying that not every cutting head gets used the same amount. The wire brush has sat in the toolbag more than it’s been on the shaft, useful for moss on the path round the shed but not something I reach for on a normal day’s strimming. The line and the blade do the actual work most of the time.

Final verdict

For the money, this earns its place in the shed. The blade clears proper overgrowth without complaint, swapping heads is quick once you’ve got the hang of the reversed thread, and a twelve month guarantee on something at this price isn’t nothing.

Where it loses marks is consistency rather than capability. A company that can’t get its own fuel ratio to match between its website and its own instruction leaflet hasn’t been careful enough with the one document that actually matters, and the harness needing real fiddling to get comfortable is the kind of thing that puts some buyers off before they’ve even started cutting anything.

Read the manual before you touch the fuel can, seat the blade washer right the first time, and you’ve got a genuinely capable do-it-all strimmer that costs a lot less than buying three separate tools to do the same jobs.