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

I've been using Ariens snowblowers all my life, so I'm pretty disappointed with my 2004 8526LE so far.  When I received it, one of the shoe bolts was stripped out and the shoe would not stay adjusted.  Ariens sent me a couple new ones, which I was happy with.  However during the big blizzard, I noticed my wheel drive was very sluggish, I had to push the thing to get it going forward, and as soon as it hit any resistance, it would stop.  I had fully tensioned and adjusted everything after the initial 15 mins but figured maybe there had been some stretching.  Brought it in to inspect, the pivot point where the drive cable connects (sticks just out of the body) was not pivoting, it was just hanging around in there loose.  Wasn't like that when I got it for sure.  Took it all apart, found the bolt with no cotter pin sitting in the bottom.  So it apparently had been slid through and no pin ever put on (the bolt was stuck in some ice on the bottom, with no pin in sight).  Of course this caused a lot of wear to the friction disc and there is rubber all over the friction plate now.  So I also needed to change the oil last night, and while it was draining I decided to inspect other parts again with a fine tooth comb.  I am missing a bolt that holds the dipstick tube support and the front of the carb cover in place, my starter has a horrible looking electrical connection that I had to re-do (it stopped working during the storm, I thought it was Ice, guess not) and in general all kinds of stuff was loose.

I bought it in the crate as it came from Ariens, unopened, so this was not a dealer assembly issue.  Pretty disapointed for $1000.....  I mean I looked it over when I got it and did the adjustments, but I had no idea I had to rip the entire thing apart and inspect the inside too.  Sheesh.

Now that its all fixed it works great, would drive itself through a brick wall, its not the quality of the product itself that bothers me, more the quality control of the assembly.  So at the beginning of next year looks like I'll need a new friction disc already and spend some time removing the rubber off the plate.  Oh well.

-Dave

Snowremover:

You wrote: "Even allowing you to talk families, you're own numbers show GM ahead of the Industry Average and Nissan.  Its funny how you try to eliminate Scion, when they are a fully owned subsidiary of Toyota."

Yes they are but their sales numbers a miniscule in the great Toyota scheme.  Do we get to count GM's stake in Subaru, Izuzu and Daewoo if we're playing this game?? or Daimler's alliance with Mitsubishi? 

You wrote: "And how is that different than the claim I made?  Think about the above statement carefully, only 85% of the Accords sold have 97% American content.  Did you also know that an engine assembled in America of all Japanese parts is considered an American engine?  None of the Accords have any American parts in their engines, but the engines are classified as American because they are assembled here (as per first link I gave)."

If you would have read the linked article you would see this is data from 2002, I'm not going to waste my time dredging up last second data for the sake of this argument, but I do know that the number of imported Accords decrease every year.  Did you know that Honda at least do use US parts in their engines??  Apparantly not.  Some are built in the Ana plant and many provided by US suppliers.  NOT just assembled here. I can't speak for the other Japanese makes, but that wasn't my argument.

Emmo wrote: You wrote: "What are you talking about?"

I was replying to your statement about all the R&D money was spent on Japanese engineers, designers etc.   This is simply not the case!

Snowremover- I heard Ariens is coming out with a snow car next year!   - Kris

Could the fact be that there are more cars, therefore more problems?

Pick what you like and buy it.

I can't see myself being anal enough to go around reading window stickers, magazines and everything else trying to figure out what the US percentages are. Hell, odds are they're not right anyway.

Man, I sure like that Lexus SUV but it has a Jap drive shaft and more foreign parts, guess I'll buy the Ford that has a Mazda transfer case and transmission. Oh wait, the Chevy has 3.2% less foreign parts, so it says, I better jump on that one.

Snow,

I like to post my thoughts like this in a public manner.

I have been following you quite closely.  You have officially passed into the world of non-productive.  Agree or not I don't care.  This is your one and only warning. 

C 

ChrisS wrote:

AGREED!

Nothing productive has come from this individual.

hickster

It does seem that he's trying to say things he isn't.  Playing with our minds?  Maybe I'm wrong. 

@snow...
That you Joe? 

anybody else see it????  I'm waiting for the honda and ford bashing to start....

No one can say you were not warned.....

C

Waste of bandwidth..