Well, I finally got a chance to do some maintenance on my father's 8 year old Honda single stage snowblower. I bought it for him as a Christmas present. This model is no longer available in the US. The current model is the HS520 which has been watered down and cheapened to a price point that is competitive with the top single stage models from Ariens, Toros, and Simplicity brands.
I replaced all the rubber auger parts, scraper bar, drive belt, spark plug, nuts bolts and nylon washers on the chute, and changed the oil that has been in that machine for at least 4 years. My father is not too keen on maintaining his power equipment. The oil was dark and smelled like gasoline. All of the maintenance was fairly straight forward and simple to do. I didn't have a chance to do any cleaning of the fuel systems or carburetor. I will probably read up on this and do it in the spring before putting the snowblower away.
After it was all buttonned up, I took it outside in 0 degree weather and tried on 18 inch hard packed snow placed by the neighbor's bobcat front loader. It started up with one pull and there was very little effort on the starter cord. It took a little bit of work chewing hard packed snow on this compared to a 2 stage snowblower, but this was expected. It would chew up and throw snow if I could push the sides hard enough to dig into the snow. But the snow was so hard from the frigid -10F weather for the last two days that I couldn't fill the bucket with snow.
Next, I decided to test out on the 1 foot snow from the patio. This snow was hard but not as heavily packed. The HS621 threw snow at least 20 foot away. This thing have power. The engine was smooth and had torque even when bogged down. I was quite impressed for an 8 year old snowblower that had been neglected in maintenance to perform the same as when it was new. Originally, I was going to test it out to make sure everything was working properly before turning it back to my father, but I liked using this so much I was going to finish the whole patio. However, it was so cold outside that my fingers were really in pain that I had to put the machine away.
I really would like this model to be still available in the US. It is very robust and heavy. At nearly 90 lbs and quite large, it is not easy to lift by oneself and fit in the trunks of most cars. So transporting this back and forth is not something you would want to do often.
My neighbor has the new Toro 221Q and I've been very impressed with this machine. I have to say that the Toro is the better model compared to the HS621. It is smaller, lighter, and have the slick chute and deflector controls. This is the model I'm thinking about getting to complement my large two stage snowblower. However, I'm not too crazy about the two-stroke engine sound and all the vibrations of the Toro. That's about it. It is very powerful and handles nicely. I think this Toro would be perfect with the Honda GX engine for its quietness and smoothness.
This message was modified Jan 17, 2009 by aa335
