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

I just purchased a new Ariens 927LE and assembled it myself.  That part was easy.  However, is there any fine tuning or adjustment to the clutches or anything that's necessary?  I fired it up last week just to make sure it is up and ready for the snow when it comes (about 200mm of rain this past two weeks here on the Island. (NL).  It started ok and when put in gear traveled both forward and backwards.  I was a little worried because the cables coming from the handelbars to the blower itself.  They appear to be really loose (almost dangling).  Is that normal? 

TIA

Snipe wrote:
Just about any grease should do as long as it says something to the order of being
waterproof on the container.  Marine, agriculture, snowmobile grease.  I coat just
about everything inside that is not painted with the stuff (keep it away from the rubber
friction disk and its drive plate, and the belts and pulleys).

Goofienewfie is our rust prevention expert around here...

Paul

pvrp wrote:
lol... I am? haha.. I guess sort of now that I had my experience with my ariens rusting. There is definitely things you should do to prevent it from happening, cause once it does its a hell of a lot more work to stop it and get it back in shape.  The outside of the unit holds up really well. Everything painted in orange should not rust unless you nick/scratch it. If so, paint some rust paint or spray it with the ariens orange paint and you should be good for a long time. As for the insides, this is where the problems can arise. While your doing your cable adjustments, put some grease on the axles.  The things that will rust are the wheels to the axle, the friction axle that doesn't get touched by the disc carrier/bearing, The wheel axle and the pulleys.  The pulleys are tricky because you don't want to get grease on the belts, so for that reason I painted mine.  Probably way to late to be painting anything now, but next year may be something to look into if you notice in rusting quite a bit.  I actually painted all the things listed that could rust.  Rust check or por 15 are good canidates for painting those things to stop rust.  If your not position to grease all those things, you will be able to get away with it probably for a few years, but you will have to sand a lot to get it back in shape, just make sure to do the wheels if nothing else.  I painted the outer edge of my friction plate, as mine didn't have any sort of plating and was rusting, but I notice another machine of exact model had plating on the pulley, its yellow/green like the other parts in the chassis (brake arm, etc..)

Make sure you have grease under the chute as well, it makes it work ten times better and will prevent the part from rusting as well, water likes to sit in the from running down the chute. Once again, do the wheels, very easy to do now and worth it, TRUST ME!

That should be it, besides the obvios places like the gears, chains, etc..

I should note that my speed and chute control notches rusted a bit as well, this is due to the space being very tight for shifting and nicking the paint. I sanded and repainted this area real well this year and should not be a problem for me anymore.  The top of the engine will rust slightly around the bolts if you don't keep the water off of it. So this year I removed the top bolts and never seized the bolts with enough so that it spewed out around the top of the bolt when tighten.

Another thing to consider is that your chute rotation tooth cable and deflector cable may freeze.  Make sure to place the cable clip in such a way as that the water has less of a dip to run into the cable. I went a step further this year and trying to cover it with some sandwhich bags to see how that works. There are pictures here, I acutally made it alot better looking later on, it was sort of a side project when I was working on the fustrating rusted wheel.

I will post some shots of mine machine, this was taken a few weeks back and looks lot better now. There is no rust and I actually clean the grease off and redone it on the differential gear as the new grease was mixing with some prior marine grease I had applied. I was just testing the new grease that paul told me about and its really great stuff.  Also the axles look like rust is showing through, but that is not the case. Its grease, I had to remove the friction rod/axle to repair a loose carrier disc and doing so I touched axles with my grease hands and makes it look like rust showing through, but not the case, the axles were sanded to factory type shine prior to the painting.   I also baked my attachment pulleys when I removed them to grease the impeller shaft that goes into the pulleys. I recommend that as well, if you get a chance. If you ever need to work on the impeller, auger, or gearcase you will want to remove those pulleys and no grease was ever applied to mine in that area and was starting to rust as well.


Everything painted in grey in this picture was either rusting badly or slightly. These are probably areas to look at. The paint was never done to look pretty and was put on with a cheap dollar store brush. If had mine time back I may have used a darker paint and then the grease wouldn't look at bad as it does, but again its not to be pretty. You may also notice that grease is coming out of the differential around the axle. I had all that apart so its well grease.



Here is the Attachment pulleys. I removed them when greasing the impeller shaft. I took both apart, primed with a dollar store brush and them sprayed them black and baked them a little. They are well coated now.  But them back together with never seized coated bolts :) You can see them or maybe not :P in the fist picture. I really liked how they turned out and when I take the axles and other pulleys out in the future I may do the same to them to make things a little more tidy :)




Thats about all I can say on that... Hope it helps. Yes it was a nice bit of work for me, but i probably wouldn't have to do half of it, if it was new and greased properly before use. I wish I did so, but none the less its fixed now.

goofienewfie wrote:
Wow GN if I had to have known the SB was going to be that much work, I would have gotten a new shovel instead... ;-)

Looks like I got my work cut out for me next summer.  I don't know if you're still here on the Island or not but yesterday it was 18 degrees her in Mt. Pearl.  SO, I might have some time to get it greased a bit yet.  Without taking anything apart is there anywhere I can and should grease before the snow comes?

Thanks for your help...much appreciated.

pvrp wrote:
Thanks Paul.  I'll have to go pick up some grease today.  Is this the case with all snow blowers  or just this one? 

Thanks again,

goofienewfie wrote:

Hi Goofie,

Great article!!

I liked your article on your oil and greasing and the pics which goes along with it. I'm in the tool and die industry and do enough heat treating myself. As far as your "baking them a little " can you please be a little more spacific on temps & time durations.

Snipe wrote:
That's a good question   

You guys near the ocean may be worse off.   I'm nowhere near it and my 9 year old machine has little
if any rust inside.  On my machine it's all the welds that have rusted underneath the paint.  Wonder
how that happens.

Paul

hirschallan wrote:
Thanks, hope it helps many at keeping rust minimal.  I can't recall what the exact temp was now, I just read the instructions on the paint. I think it was something like 250 f  for 2 hours, i actually went a little less then what was on the can, was a little afraid of degrading the metal, probably no chance of that, but I was playing safe. I used Dupli Color engine enamel. It is designed for high heat applications and really bakes on good.  I was actually wanting to use VHT engine paint, but some how ended up buying the wrong one. I had both in my hands reading them and must have put down the wrong one.  Did not notice it until I got home and thought oh well, give this stuff a go.  I really didn't need to bake it, I did so as it wasn't that great of a day for drying paint, wanted to speed it up. It ended up really nice though.

Snipe,  It wouldn't take that long to grease up the machine in most places. I just went a little further. As for the painting and stuff, probably wouldn't need it in most places if I greased the machine on day 1.   I live in Mt pearl :)  The weather is awesome aside from all the rain.  If the temp was any lower my machine would be having a blast for the last few weeks. Think its holding off for my snow cab to arrive.. haha

Paul,  The welds on my machine that are painted orange show no signs of rust. But the auger on the other hand, is rusting slightly at the welds. I took care of that with the same paint I used for the pulleys. Primed and painted.