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

i'm interested in buy a 24in simplicity snowblower for a driveway i'll say 60 x20 with a small slope upwards from the house. same engine and torque as the L1226E. aluminum gear case though. any kind of help will appreciated.

mikiewest wrote:

Mikie: your experience is the exception. Not the rule. I speak from personal experience, and pretty much general knowledge shared by those I know willing to speak the truth. Asian vehicles are simply built better. Pick up any consumers guide and look at reliability and repair records for vehicles going back twenty years or more. It's pretty much an accepted fact by most of the world that Asian vehicles are much more reliable. When I walk down my street and see that 75% of the vehicles being driven are Asian, that has to tell us something. Right? I'm sure that if you live in a location where there is a domestic vehicle plant, there will be an understandable skew of the numbers in favour of domestics due to brand loyalty/employee ownership. However, I'm a thousand miles from any vehicle manufacturing plants. We live and drive in very harsh conditions. People here buy what works and costs least to maintain.

borat that might have been true but ford fusion and escape have gotten very good to excellent ratings for reliability.Also maybe that japanese car might be more reliable but when you have to fix it,its much more expensive to do so.

mikiewest wrote:
Actually I think that Snowmann provides very fair-balanced information.  I appreciate his willingness to share his knowledge on this board.  He knows more about Ariens so of course he's going to discuss Ariens products.  Frankly I wish that someone associated with Simplicity (or is it Briggs now), Toro, Honda, etc...would be as willing to share their expertise on this forum as well. 

i will bring up the lubrication need with the dealer when i purchase it. my husky 8527sbe manual says no lubrication needed,was done at the factory although i did spray some silicone on the pivot points.

jack wrote:

I'm assuming that the manual was referring to the auger gear case not requiring lubrication. My Simplicity manual says the same thing. Elsewhere, any machine with exposed moving parts, working in wet and occasionally salty conditions will require lubrication regardless of what the manual says. Unless you want your wheels rusted to the axles, augers rusted t the shafts, premature wear/damage to control linkage, cables and drive chains etc. you'd be wise to put a bit of effort into keeping the machine lubed. Particularly if you don't do your own repair work. The bill adds up pretty quick trying to get a rusted wheel off at a repair shop at $82.00/hr.????? (can you believe that?)

At those rates,one is better off taking a course on how to maintain their snowblower.Oh and dont forget the outrageous p/u and del of ur snowblower rate....

borat i have noticed rust on the axle on my husky should i take the wheel ,sand the rust ,then lub it with what? your the man borat

jack wrote:

Yes. You should clean up the axle and put any decent marine or snowmobile grease on axle shaft and inside wheel. You don't need to get down to shiny steel on the axle. Just get any lumpy stuff of of it. I find that medium grip sand paper is good for that. If you have no supply of grease nor a grease gun, you can get a small single hand operated grease applicator and grease for less than $20.00 at any large auto parts store. You'll need the grease gun to lube the auger shafts and any other component with zerk fitting sticking out of it. As Mikiewest says, it would be beneficial to learn something about the equipment and do as much work as you can. As previously mentioned, the shop rates at some service outlets are utterly ridiculous. You can do a bit of preventative maintenance now and it will save you big bucks down the road.

I need to replace the auger belt on my simplicity snowblower.I followed the manual but can't pull the belt out between the auger pulley and drive belt pulley..There is not enough clearance  Any suggestions?

I just wanted to add my $0.02 on the gear box lube issue. When I rebuilt my 20 yr old MTD I opened the gear box to find that the grease had "dried up" and crawled into the far recesses as Snowman mentioned. There is no opening on this unit, so no way to add lubricant short of dissassembly. When talking to the older gent who does OPE repairs here in town, he suggested to drill a hole in the gear box so you could add a bit of gear oil once in a while. Would the oil mix with the grease or would it behave like oil & water.

There also seems to be a run on Ariens gears this year which leads me to believe that despite what the manufacturer says (planned obsolesense), you should always plan on having to crack the gear box to replace the grease (if that is what they use). I guess frequency would depend on use, ie. more often if you do a lot of heavy wet snow & EOD.

Snowman, if the manufacturer calls for NLGI 1, could we safely drop to an NLGI 00 to ensure proper lubrication of the gears?

Thanks