YardMax YD4103 Powered Wheelbarrow Buggy 208cc Briggs & Stratton

Arrived by freight from China. It was well packed, with lots of plastic foam padding, still there were deep scratched in the paint in two areas. At least touch-up paint was provided. Assembly was a challenge. The bolt placement for installing the handles had changed, and not for the better. I had to prop up the chassis in order to reach some of the under-carriage bolts. If you're not careful, Darwin may visit. Once assembled, the engine started on the second pull. I'm still "learning" the transmission level. A lot of false neutrals, selecting one of the 3 forward gears is a guess, at best. Don't try the change gears if correct selection is essential to safety. In 1st gear, this thing has torque. It was interesting to watch one forward and the opposite rear wheel spin when traction was poor under heavy load. That kept the pulling force equalized, left to right, and it eventually pulled through. Would I recommend it? Absolutely! Is it perfect? No, but that's not the correct question. I plan to use the crap out of this one. I hope it lives up to initial impressions.

I have now used the machine enough to write a good review. Assembling the unit was fairly straight forward except for the following. There was welding flash inside some of the nuts that were welded to the axle flanges that the wheel lug bolts go into. I had to run a tap thru the nuts threads to get the bolt in. I was an auto mechanic 50 years ago and still found it very difficult to start the nuts on the underside of the rear handle support mount. These 2 nuts should be welded to the under side to facilitate easier assembly.
The hand controls are very intuitive and well placed. The only real problem is shifting the transmission from one gear to another. It usually takes several attempts to mesh the gears to move the gearshift from 1'st to 2nd gear and from 2nd gear to reverse, etc. It seems to me the gears should be more bevel cut to make shifting easier. Remember, there is no oil in the engine!

All in all the YardMax is a great machine. Easy to assemble. The one big piece left out of the operators manual is info on insuring that the tires are properly inflated. I should have checked but just wanted to use it so ended up having two of the tires spin on the rims ripping the valve stems off. I was lucky to get new tubes locally and checked that all were properly inflated to 300KPs or 48psi. One other note - the throttle cable tends to bind in the throttle handle. All in all it is a great machine. I have moved tons of dirt and drainage rock in the past few days and it really has saved by 70 year old back.