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

Have an old Ariens snowblower, the classic 70's design.

Sometimes the shifter will not allow me to go beyond forward speed two, other times it'll go right to four without a problem.  I can just stand there, bouncing the shifter back and forth while holding the clutch constantly in, until it just slips into fourth.  Nothing appears to be binding,

I don't want to force it to go beyond two when it's being temperamental, and I can continue repeatedly going from neutral to fourth until it actually gets there.

So, in the end my question is what can possibly cause sporadic stubbornness of a shifter?  I took the bottom off and cleaned and applied some synthetic oil to the track the rubber wheel slides on.  Everything in there looked fine.

I can continue the shifting game, but don't want to be encouraging something to break.

Second part of my question is how to prevent the chute from rotating on it's own.  It easily rotates into position, but vibrations and snow being shoved through it cause it to typically rotate to the right on it's own.  I see nothing to create any tension to keep it from rotating.  Tempted to add a barbell weight to the handle to keep it always down and to stop the chute from rotating.   I'll add that the inside of the chute looks like sandblasted burnt sugar because of the corrosion.