Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

I'm restoring an old Ariens Sno Thro and one of the rakes is seemingly locked to the shaft. Guy at work put it on a 40 ton hydraulic press and it still didn't budge - just started distorting the rake. He didn't heat it though.

I have a second parts snowblower and the rake is stuck on that one as well. The difference is that one is on the "closed" side of the gearbox so I could remove the axle shaft if necessary.

I'm was thinking of getting as much penetrating oil on it as possible, putting a gear puller on it, leaving ot for a few days, tighten the puller, etc. Any other suggestions? Both gearboxes are nice and tight and they're the old cast iron ones so I'd like to rescue both of them.

There is a hole in the end of the shaft, I put a smaller bolt in it so the puller would have something to bear on.

Jeez,
You guys are scaring me......sounds like dangerous work.
Is there anything I should be doing NOW so I do not need to do this to MY Ariens snowblower a few years down the road??

Frank D.

Regularly do the grease procedure, take the shear pins out and rotate the augers around the shaft while putting grease in the fittings once in a while.  I'll do that sometime this season. 

Frank, what AJ says is Ground Truth.

Many owners faithfully lube the Zerks - you can tell because it's coming out the ends. But they don't rotate the Rake on the auger shaft, so it never gets distributed.

The other problems I found on almost every one I looked at was that the bushings on the ends of the auger and for the axle shaft are often badly worn. They're $3 each at a dealer. The auger bushings are easy, the axle bushings require knocking out a couple of roll pins.