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

Bought a Ariens 8526 last year and just dragged it out of storage.  Discovered the orange paint blistering and peeling in many places.  It's down to bare metal.  What happened?  It's never seen salt.

Is that how they make them now?  Looks awful, and I wanted to sell it.

Even if you don't use salt on your driveway, EOD piles pushed up from town roads can have salt in them from what they use on the roads (along with chunks of pavement, ice, rocks,roadkill, etc.). I give my housing a good rinse with a hose in the spring. But this would seem to be a negligible amount to cause  blistering and peeling on a year old machine. Where and how was it stored? Indoors nice and dry, or outdoors on the ground with a tarp (tarps can trap moisture). Just a thought. Maybe it was just a lousy factory paint job and could be brought to your  dealer's attention as a warranty issue.

Snowblower is stored in an unheated room below the house which is enclosed by cement blocks.  I use it to clear an area about 25 feet wide and 40 feet long leading to a private road which doesn't use salt.   The plow that does the road doesn't leave a huge pile to break through.   The pavement is in excellent condition.

It's blistering in several spots; inside the auger area and around the outside edges.  Blisters are small to silver dollar size and go to bare metal when touched.

As a sidethought, is it possible to upgrade this 8624LE to a differential system?  I find it very difficult to maneuver.  It's a fine snowblower, and would not really like to take the loss selling it.

Ariens rep asked for photos in above post, which I will send to him.

They had this problem quite a few years ago (early 90s)when I worked at a local dealership that sold Ariens snowblowers.

we used to get a few back that had the paint pealing right down to the bare metal, what the factory used to get us to do was sand and respray.

I see that whatever the issue was it is still around.

At that time the issue was improper prep work to the units at the factory level we were told.

singercs wrote:

I recall this problem from conversations with those that were around in the ealry 90's. If I remember correctly, it was an insufficient cleaning process on the powder paint line.

Our paint system has worked really well since then. It's likely this is an isolated occurence.

This housing could be a "repaint" that wasn't processed properly. Occasionally, when a housing makes it to the assembly line with a paint defect, it is rejected and sent to be buffed and/or stripped and repainted. It could have picked up a contaminant that the paint line washer was not designed to remove.

Snowman, if you get a chance, I'd still like to see those pics so I can turn them over to our quality people.

PK