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

which of these 3 is the most powerful and reliable?

Simplicity I1224E @ $1099, Ariens ST24E Deluxe @ $996, Ariens ST24DLE Platinum @ $1,290,  Husqvarna 11524E @ $1,300 or Husqvarna 924SB @ $850

Any other brands, models that are better and why?

Also which engine do I want....Briggs, Subaru or LCT?

I agree with Slinger, for that kind of money, those marks shouldn't be there (forcing the customer to clean it up). Any monkey can slap a chalkmark on the machine. If they want to reassure customers they should include a quality control checklist with the machine, signed by the inspector and then an assembly checklist signed by the dealer.
Cheers

At the factory I work for, line workers are required to mark with a colored marker each fastener and hydraulic fitting to indicate they torqued it with the proper torque wrench.  Each shift gets its own color.  I think this is a pretty standard quality control procedure and is likely what it means on the Ariens machines.

bdresch wrote:

I think his point was that the dealer should clean it up before the machine gets sold to the consumer. I agree, no excuse for leaving manufacturing marks on when the dealer sells it. Just clean them off.

Agreed, if a dealer doesn't take the time to clean up the a new machine to make it spiffy for the buyer, you'd have to guess what else did they short changed?  Extra details goes a long way. 

Quality is expected when you buy a high dollar snowblower.  I don't need factory marks to reaffirm that expectation. 

If leaving the factory inspection marks on the machine is what Ariens' quality control strategy has been all these years to earn them their good reputation, then far be it from me to criticize them for boxing the units that way. If I buy a cash and carry box from a big-box dealer such as Home Depot and enjoy the associated savings, I have no problem with removing the marks myself.

If I purchased the unit from a full service dealer, I would expect them to have removed these marks along with all their other added fine-tuning and assembly services to justify the premium price.  You get what you pay for, or should.

I bought as much machine as I was comfortable paying for and then provided as much of my own labour to save or compensate on that aspect of the purchase.  Including pushing it home myself on the borrowed HD cart. (Too lazy to go home and hook up the trailer, too much stuff to move).

NotMoneyGuy wrote:

I think many of us have purchased from full service dealers who assembled everything and made sure it was 100%.

If you didn't, no harm, no foul. But I'd be hesitatnt to deal with a place again like for service if they couldn't be bothered to wipe the machine down after they assembled it. But if you picked it up unassembled then no big deal to wipe it down. I had to do the same thing with my huge Weber BBQ grill that we use all year round.

I really need to snap some pics of my wife cooking when it's snowing outside.

Steve_Cebu wrote:
Is that before or after she clear the snow off the driveway? 

I was fortunate enough to buy one of the last Simplicity snow throwers  built in the Wisconsin plant.   It was a year old when I bought it from an out of the way farm implement/tractor dealership.  The machine had sat for a year in a shipping container out back.  When I picked it up, they had the machine in the service bay putting fresh oil in it.   They had also performed a carburetor repair in accordance with a  B&S engine recall/service bulletin.  The machine was all cleaned up and they had an inspection sheet with each dealer preparation item checked off.  They reviewed the check list with me because that was one of the remaining boxes on the check list that was not checked off.   Those guys were thorough.  As a result, I took home a machine that was properly serviced and adjusted. 

I've done some little tweaks to it here and there and have nothing but praise for this thing.  I put it through it's paces this morning due to five or six inches of wet snow/rain we received overnight.    

aa335 wrote:

Depends on the weather.

borat wrote:
I've recently visited an Simplicity dealer.  I looked at the Signature pro model, the smallest one they have, P1524, I think.  I walked away thinking it's a bit better built than other brands, but nothing that impresses me.  The notched chute deflector adjustment on the console was a big no no.  It was notchy and too stiff.  After trying out for a few minutes, I say I could do without the channel welded handles.  It looks impressive, but offers no advantage in stiffness.  In fact, it was just heavy for the sake of being heavy.  The channel could potentially be used for better and cleaner cable routing, but that wasn't the case.

I don't have previous model to compare with in terms of build quality, but from what I've seen on the current model, it's blah.  Definitely one of the negative effects of cross-platform sharing.