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

I have a an Arien 1332 which I love.....this is my third season.   I have a huge driveway with a 75' rise.   This snowblower is a champ...until today.

It snowed about 5 inches and then rain, rain, rain.    So I went out and made 2 passes on my driveway.   Comming up the hill, water is running everywhere down the snowblower, that is how wet the snow is.   Great shooting distance of the slush....about a 20 foot arc.  (I just installed a new augar belt is it was adjusted perfectlly as of this a.m.).  

Now the snowblower stops in the middle of the driveway on the hill of course.   I could lift up the blower wheels and get the wheels to turn when lifted.   But put it down and nothing.   Eventually, it chugged a little, then started going.    A bit later it did it again.   And again.   I stopped because I did not want to damage it.   Took off the belt cover and lower housing cover, everthing looked fine.  

After reading multiple post about the Arien's drive...I see the traction drive system is sensitive to water.   OK, so can I crank up the pressure on the traction drive clutch spring jam nut?  How much is too much?    The owner's manual says it should be between 1/2" and 11/16".   I was at at about 5/8', just under the maxium.   (Also, I cheated, and grabbed the cable when I was on the hill, putting a bit more pressure on it....it did nothing).       So I assume these are like my car breaks that when wet, you have to put more pressure on them.   Any comments are apprcieated.   I did try to search for additional threads using the search engine but gave up.....sorry if this is a repeat.

Off to finish the driveway.....

It is a ST1332 DLE  with the folloing numbers on the owner manual: 926500 001926 in case that helps.

Can you bring it indoors to a heated place so the machine can thoroughly
dry out ?  Then try it again and see.  I and others have had similar problems
so it would be nice if we could determine exactly what the cause is, then
figure out the simplest solution.

If it's just a matter of water getting in then it should be possible to install
some sort of gasket around the belt cover area.  Ariens does seem to have
attempted to prevent water getting in as the belt cover, at least on my machine,
is now made in such a way as to offer a kind of double seal.

As far as adjustment goes there is somewhere in the manual that says that
there should be 1/32" clearance between the friction disk and the drive plate.
When I adjusted  the cable to so that the spring stretched 5/8" or so, there was
quite a bit more than 1/32" clearance of the friction disk.  So I tightened the cable
some more until the clearance was reduced.  This has the good  sideffect of
bringing the engine pulley and driveplate/pulley into better alignment at idle. 
If you tighten too much though the machine will creep forward with the drive
disengaged.

Paul