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

I just put in a new auger belt and noticed that the holes for the bolts that hold the front end of the blower to the back end where elongated. I also find that putting the bolts back on after replacing the belt is a real pain. part of the reason is that the nuts that were welded to the inside of the chassis, in line with the holes, fell off two years ago and it take a bit of fiddling to get the regular nuts to not fall into the bottom of the housing.

I've been trying to come up with a modification that will make it easy to open and close the pulley area. I want to make it as easy as possible to change and adjust the belts outside in cold weather with a minimum of tools, preferably while wearing gloves.

One trick that I find helps a lot is to tie one end of a ratchet tie down to the handles and to hook the other end to the top of the auger housing. You can then use the ratchet to pull the two pieces together so that the bolts holes are in line.

AKAmajoorxlr8n - Certainly looks better than the bolts. The main problem though is fishing the fastener through the holes, particularly on the side with the idler wheel for the auger system. The space on the inside of the housing is very constricted and I sometimes drop one of the fasteners into the housing and that means opening the darn thng up again and starting from square one again. I'll give your suggestion a try and get back to you.

The basic setup is that there are  two pins at the bottom of the traction housing, one on either side . There are two "C" shaped holes at the bottom of the auger housing that mate with the pins. This allows the two housings to pivot open when you remove the two bolts at the top of the housing. The bolts are in the area where the shroud that covers the belts is fastened to the traction housing. The bolts fit through holes at the top of each housing when they are pivoted together and aligned properly. The original the holes had nuts welded to the inside of the housing so that you just had to put the  the bolts through the two holes and tighten them. Unfortunately two things happen, the thread on the bolts and nuts get stripped and the nuts fell off when the welds broke.

There ae several problems with this system:

1. The nuts are not easily replacable
2. Getting the two housings to align properly while trying to get a bolt and nut threaded in the hole is a PITA
3. Even when you do it with one try it takes a fair amout of time with bare fingers out in the cold.

I've been thinking of some sort of latch system that both reinforces the connection and makes it easy to open and close. I may have to bite the bullit and have some nuts welded back onto the housing but I would prefer coming up with something a little more robust that is more convenient to use.

  hey  nibbler,  try this.  figure length of bolt needed.  figure the diameter of elongated hole, might need to drill.    take new bolt and screw on a flange nut,  insert into hole and put on another flange nut.  tighten the  nuts and put some spot weld onto them.   being the nuts are welded they are not going anywhere,  this will also strenghten

I don't know how well this would work, but what about attaching the clamps the use to hold poup camper roofs closed. They would be VERY easy to hook and unhook, and I think they would be able to hold it together fairly well.

Adam

I'll have a look at all three suggestions and see which one "fits" best with my mechanical abilities and what I want to be able to do. If there are any other ides out theire keep em comin!