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

Have a 10 year old Toro 824.. Has been a trouble free machine.. Mostly just oil changes and occassional belt tightening, oiling etc.. 

Today did the whole driveway and noticed the last pass I was not throwing snow like normal.  Determined that auger was not turning.  Impeller yes auger no.  Seemed the auger was slightly scraping the asphalt.  Raised it up using the guides it is free and can rotate by hand but while (by hand) I can turn the shaft from the impeller the auger is not driven?

I assume there is a gear inside the aluminum housing that may be bad?  Any assistance appreciated.  Is it replaceable by a not real handy mechanic?!

Thanks for your well thought out and visual reply.. appreciated.  I did go on Toro's site and saw what you had described.  Funny thing is I opened up the gear case and the helical and worm gear look fine.. No real wear and no metal shavings etc.  Not bone dry - not even close.

Can the helical slide off the key that it sits on?  I am going to attempt to put it back together and see if I can't get the gears to mesh correctly.. reassemble fill it with oil and see if it that is the ticket.  The pain is the reassembly to make sure I have the augur shaft and impeller shaft seated and centered properly before I can see if I have got it correct.  If I bolt back the gear housing though I may be able to tell pretty quickly.

If the gears did not mesh correctly or slid off it's key you'd have known that already.

It probably won't slide off the key unless something else is broken like a holding collar. The gear is usually on there pretty tight and is not kept in place only by the key. In line with the auger shaft the blades ride on are other parts that keep it inplace. The key for one direction and other things for 180 out.

It's key could break so the thing to check now that you've got it open. It's possible that it's fine so makes some of your reported observations suspect. By the way I did the same exercise last week.

My auger blades were not turning, shear pins were fine and the drive shaft and impeller turning. The only thing it could have been was the key. The key was found to be fine so where did I go wrong?

I had setup a big mirror infront of the intake housing to watch everything before deciding that was the problem. The impeller was turning fast but not the augers - shear bolts were fine and the impeller attached to the auger drive shaft so ??? The answer is I flubbed up somehow. If your key is ok and probably is you somehow got the observations wrong.

After talking all this over with a dealer he says it will turn out to be my belt slipping. I was at another dealer later in the day getting a replacement belt and after showing him my old belt he said I bet you had some thumping on the augers. I did and he pointed out a 5 inch worn spot on the belt bottom v part. That created two humps at the ends of the worn section.
When I watched with the mirror I saw the auger assemply pusling. That helped me to guess (wrongly) that something was broken inside the auger gearbox.
I'm buttoning it up tomorrow with a new belt and I'll bet the machine will be fine. So on an outside chance maybe you've got the same thing. What's the belt like?

Also, most gears have teeth with a pyramid shape with the top flat. When the gear is warn to where the flat is a point, the gear is too worn. The flat section may have a slight bend to it but the bend is a concave flat. So it's teeth are shapped like a saw horse sort of made from 2x4's. The top 2x4 is flat. If the top is a point the gear is too worn to use.

Trouts2, I just want to say that your explanation are very good, a must here on OPE, stay around my friend, we need expert like you dude, keep the good work Okay!

Belts are fine.  DId take a look.  However if the impeller is turning and the auger is stationary (not pulsing or moving at all ) then it has to be in the gearbox.

I'm just reviewing here waiting to see how you made out.

Two days ago you said the shear bolts were fine.

Yesterday you said:

The impeller shaft is connected by two shear? bolts but they have a brass? casing that fits into the shaft.. any advice?

It seems like you were not so sure about what the bolts were and possibly thinking they were a casting. It could be that bolts are missing - broken off so you're not seeing them.

In the drawing below 60 is the shear bolt and the brass casing probably the support bearing and holder 57, 58, and 59.

If those are all ok then it's probably a broken gear key seeing that the grease was clear. Also you had been running fine except the shoes loosened and your augers hit so a shear bolt or key likely to have broken. The design is for the shear bolts to give first but..... 

You were putting it together but did not mention the condition of the gear key. What happened with the key? Was it ok?

dawei

this is an email a fellow member recieved from Toro in response to shear bolts

"Toro snow throwers do not have shear pins.  The reason for this is if you hit something while snow throwing, the auger and engine will stop letting you know that something is wrong.  You can then remove whatever it was that you hit, start up the machine, and continue snow throwing.  If the snow thrower had shear pins, they would need to be replaced before starting the snow thrower again."

Well the journey continues....

Pulled it all apart.  Shear bolts fine..  Oil low but clear of any shavings... Gears both worm and helical look fine.  Reassembled (tough getting the 4 bolts holding the bearings/flanges and thus position the augur shaft to the frame by hand) and found I had missed one of the spacer/washers that go into the gear case assy on the auger shaft ) @#$@$$.  Now pulling it all back apart.

As I described above not real handy but I've seemed to manage.  The key looked fine (small half disk that fits into groove on augur shaft).  At this point the only thing I can think of is the helical gear somehow moved off the key and was spinning free and not engaging the worm gear.  Although I really don't see how that could happen.  Admit I am puzzled but until I put it back together again I won't know if I've actually got it licked.  Question.  When reassembled should I be able to spin the augur (and thus impeller) by hand? 

The gear has it's key so fixed in one direction. It can't move in the other without breaking the auger gear case. The worm can't ride up over the gear unless it breaks the gear case. The condition of the auger assembly is the same as at the start.

The screw-hh's appear to be good. You would have taken them out to slip off the auger blades from the gear shaft so they are out as a suspect.

The impeller is mated to the drive shaft. Any impeller movement should move the auger blades. It won't be immediate. Some impellers move the auger blades in an 16th of a turn, other in almost 3/4'ers of a turn.

Moving the auger blades to make the impeller spin is hard. (But that can't happen anyway as your spin freely).

Moving the auger drive pully to drive everything is easier if the belt is not tight. You can take off the belt if there's belt resistance and move the auger drive pulley by hand. Make a pencil mark on the augers and then give the pulley a 10 full turns and see if the pencil mark moved.

There might be some friction around. You could wedge the blades with a board and see what that does to turning the pulley. If the pulley turns and the auger blades wedged you still have an issue. If you can't move the pulley then putting the belt on and firing up the system should move the auger blades. If not then the belt is slipping on it's v-pulley and you can see that with the belt cover off.

By the way, I put the auger gear case back in my snowblower today and it worked fine. I added a new auger drive belt. My problem was a bogus observation which I can't explain. As I explained in the other post I thought I saw the augers standing still while the impeller turned rapidly (a number of times).

I'm very interested to hear what happens with your snowblower. From the information you've given nothing was found defective and although the auger section disassembled and reassembled nothing was changed so the problem should still be there. There are no new parts other than grease.

As I look outside her in Massachusetts it's snowing and although I have to admit the coming snow was worrisome w/ a loooong driveway. I just finished up reassembling the machine.. Refit the key, realigned the gears bolted all back together, filled it with gear oil. and..................

It works!  I still don't know what happened.  As I recall disassembling the gear box I do remember the key falling from the bottom of the assy.  I may have dislodged it when I was pulling it apart but that is all I can imagine as to the problem.

Anyway as a really poor mechanic I am happy I took the plunge and repaired (cross fingers) it myself.  My thanks to all on this board for your help and suggestions.