Hello,
I recently moved into a house in suburban NY (Suffern) with a paved driveway of about 300 feet with a slight grade down to the garage. Mostly single car width, one pull off spot of triple width and triple width for about 25' in front of the garage. Plenty of room for throwing snow into the trees on either side, EOD is a cul-de-sac. I am limited to the big orange box for my snow blower purchase (cashed in all my credit card points for $500 in gift cards when they were on sale at 20% off). Right now I am leaning towards the Toro 726 OE, but wanted to ask the advice of the experts.
To me it looks like this $999 model is identical to all of the other models except it does not have power steering (free wheeling), and it has a 205cc engine and no headlight. Is this the only difference, or are there other factors in the construction/materials that I should be worried about? Toro has a comparison PDF here:http://www.toro.com/home/snowthrowers/gastwostage/tsn_490-8117NA_10_launch_ss_cen_lo.pdf and it only mentinos the above. I have never used a snow blower before, but I am making the call that at 33 years old, I can still muscle the machine around the turn at the EOD and garage, should only need to make 5 or six trips up and down the long driveway. Is this a crazy assumption? Will it be miserable to make the turns, or no big deal for a healthy guy. Also assuming that 205 CC Briggs & Stratton will get the job done.
If anyone has made a similar choice, please let me know if there are other factors I should be considering, as you can see, I am pretty clueless when it comes to the snowblowers. I also have a 6spd Jeep Wrangler, but after looking into plows a little bit it seems like it is going to be well over $3k to do it right, and might impact the front end life of the Jeep.
Thanks a lot,
Dan
Toro 826 OXE Snowblower, Echo PB-500 backpack blower, Toro 22" high wheel recycler mower, Jeep Wrangler JK Unlimited 6 spd :)
