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

I have a Honda HS928 snowblower with a manual drive transmission it works in 3rd and reverse but will not engage in 1st and 2nd.  Are there any adjustments that can made to fix this and if so what are they.  Thanks

Correction I have a Honda  HS80 snowblower with a friction wheel drive that will engage in 3rd and reverse but not 1st or 2nd I have tried adjusting the shift linkage rod to no avail does anyone know how to adjust it, or are there parts that need replacement?  Thanks

I don't know how Honda does it, but on my Ariens the manual says to lift the wheels off the ground with something, put the machine in neutral, tighten the adjustment nut with 1 hand while spinning the wheels with the other, when the wheels start to bind back the nut out 3 turns.

Ariens has the adjustment nut on the back outside of the body under the handlebars.  It is a nut that is on the piece the drive handle rod connects to.

If nothing else, you should pull the bottom cover and have a look what is going on.  You might just need a new friction wheel, or you could have some bad bearings.

Below is a link to an exploded view of your machine.  You did not give the serial number so this drawing is for serial numbers starting with 10…..   You may have 11 or something else but this should match.

http://www.boats.net/parts/search/Honda/Snow%20Blower/0/HS80%20TA%20SNOW

%20BLOWER%2C%20JPN%2C%20VIN%23%20SA1-1000001/parts.html

 

Here is what some of the parts are so you’ll have an idea of how things work and what to adjust. 

 

Transmission housing:

The transmission is driven by the drive belt pulley.  Has the drive plate mounted on top.  The housing is attached to a shaft by two 1 inch loops molded into the transmission housing (see transmission in the link above).  The housing is clamped to that shaft by two screws that go through the housing loops and into the shaft.  When ever that shaft pivots, the housing pivots.  That is how the drive plate gets moved up and down, engaged or away from the friction disk.

 

Clutch Arm:

The clutch arm is figure (9) in the friction disk drawing.   The shaft (5) it is pinned to (by 29) is the shaft the transmission pivots on (actually it pivots with).  When the clutch arm moves it pushes the drive plate away from the friction disk.  That allows you to shift speeds and get forward and reverse.  If the friction disk was on the drive plate there would be too much friction to move the friction disk with the shift lever at the dash.  Moving the drive plate away from the friction disk allows the friction disk to move on its shaft so you can shift to other speeds.

 

Clutch Arm spring:

This spring (8) attaches on one end to (22) and the other end to a hole in a bolt mounted into the tractor housing base.  That bolt is (12) in the engine bed drawing.   It screws into the bed and has locking nuts to adjust its travel.   That travel controls the position of and tension on the clutch arm.   The job of the clutch arm spring is to always pull on the arm and keep the drive plate on the friction disk.  The only time it slackens is when in neutral or for a short time going between shifts (esplained below).

 

Shift lever at the dash:

One cable on the shift lever is connected to the clutch arm.  When you shift gears you come out of a slot.  When you move out of a slot that pulls the cable underneath which is connected to the clutch arm.  The clutch arm gets pulled away from the spring and causes the shaft it is pinned with to pivot.  The shaft turn pulls the drive plate away from the friction disk.  That allows you to shift as the frition disk is then not touching the drive plate.  When you then put the shift lever into another slot the cable loosens and the spring can then pull back the clutch arm causing the drive plate to go back to touching the friction disk.  You can the tension the drive pulley and the machine will move.

 

Adjustments:

Your are not moving in 1 and 2. 

 

1.It could be a problem internal to the transmission.

2.It could be an adjustment.

3.It’s possible that you have a worn friction disk and just catch in reverse and third.  The disk should measure 5.89 inches and the service limit 5.83.  Very unlikely it’s this.

 

For 1 and 2.  Flip the machine onto its bucket and take off the bottom cover to see what’s going on in there.   Move the shift to neutral, 1, 2 then 3 and each time move the drive plate by hand while holding the friction disk.  In neutral the clutch arm should be pulled enough by the cable to back off the drive plate away from the friction disk.  In 1, 2 or 3 the drive plate should be firmly pressing against the friction disk.  It should be hard to turn the friction disk. 

   Moving the shift lever to different gears which will cause you to travel through neutral (not neutral position on the dash just neutral as in the drive plate backs off the friction disk) and watch the cultch arm.  Watch the drive plate and see if it swings when shifting between gears i.e. backing off away from the friction disk. 

   Grab the splined shaft the friction disk rides on to see if there is any play especially on the right side as you look into the tractor section.  The shaft fits into a ball bearing on the right could be the problem or part of the problem

The pivoting shaft at the base of the clutch arm could also be a problem but very unlikely.  The same with the tightness of the transmission housing to that shaft.  Shake them to make sure.

 The drive plate location is adjusted by the cable nut on the cable that goes to the clutch arm.  Further adjustment is done by the bolt attached to spring (8) at the bottom of the tractor section.   If nothing is loose or worn in there then you should be able to adjust those two to make the friction disk firmly touch the drive plate when in gear.  When in neutral the pull from the spring should be offset by the pull of the cable from the shift lever and pulling the drive plate away from the friction disk.  Adjust the cable nut and the spring tension to make that happen.  If that can not be done then there may be slop or wear someplace and you’ll have to poke around to see where it is. 

 

Shifting into reverse and third pulls on the clutch arm cable and to the drive transmission cable and could also be the issue.  It could be that the cable needs adjust, is frozen somehow or the transmission itself is gone.  If everything there is ok and no problems with the drive plate, friction disk movements and adjustments then the transmission is suspect.  You could try engaging the clutch and hand turning the pulley (spark plug line pulled out)  to see if the drive plate is moving in all gears.  You could support the machine on the base to lift the wheels off the ground and pull on the start rope with the clutch engaged.  The drive plate should move in all gears.  

 

That’s all I can think of at the moment.  I’m not all that familiar with Honda as I just got one last week and had drive issues on mine so just getting familiar with the internals.  I’d be interested in what the issue is.

 

The setting for the drive clutch (up near the handle levers) :
"1. Depress the drive clutch lever gradually and adjust so that the drive clutch lever stroke is 5.5" - 6" at the point where the pulley starts to move.

2. Adjust by loosening the clutch cable lock nut and turning teh adjusting nut. After the adjustment, start the engine and make sure that the belt is not rotating with the clutch disengaged"

Is this the track drive HS-80 or the wheeled version.  The two had very different transmissions.   lLook very closely at how the sub transmission shifts. It uses one gear for first and second, the second gear for 3rd and reverse. When you push the shifter all the way down it pushes a paddle to shift the sub transmission. When you pull it all the way up it pushes up another paddle when it hits reverse.

There was a design flaw in the "track" version of the HS-80. The reverse paddle (number 12 in the diagram) is a little farther away than is should have been.  These paddles need grease or they will wear away causing problems.  I only know this problem to exist on the track version so disregard all this if you have wheels and excuse me for wasting your time.

 

Underdog: "Is this the track drive HS-80 or the wheeled version.  The two had very different transmissions."

The TA and WA use the same controls, transmision, engine bed, and friction disk.  The external parts attached to the

engine bed are different to accomidate the crawlers.    The drawings for the transmission show the physical

parts as the same but the callouts have mistakes.  For example part 6 in both drawings is called out as used in the WA

but not in the TA.  The is nothing in the TA drawing to take it's place.  It has to be used in the TAor the machine

won't drive anywhere.  There's a drawing mistake.  If there is some change it might be gearing teeth but nothing that

would change adjustment settings that I can see.   The few I checked were the same in both.

What is different?

Can you adjust the size of the posted jpgs?  They blowout the formatting and make the thread hard to read.

Sorry about the blown out images, my monitor must have a different resolution. I don't have the manual in front of me but if my memory (what's left) serves me the track version has the potential to exert more torque to the drivetrain. So I thought that Honda (in anticipation of this added stress) had installed a torque limiter to the the track version and this resulted in a few other differences.  If the issue on this HS-80 involves a wheeled version I don't think this is relevant. If I am wrong don't hesitate to tell me. That's  the only way I will learn and I don't want to spread mis-information.  

I looked through the Boats.net exploded diagrams that were posted and I don't see any difference between the track and wheel version either.

I must have gotten that wrong.

There is something suspicious about these diagrams however.  If you look at the transmissions and compare the one for the track vs. the wheeled version  the exploded diagrams appear the same however the parts listing are different. There are extra transmission parts listed for the track machine.  A few of these include: 

21	23491-736-A00	SHAFT, SHIFT FORK (Honda Code 2141448).	$19.64	$15.71	1
22	23492-736-A00	FORK, SHIFT (Honda Code 2141455).	$7.04	$5.63	1
23	23494-736-000	SPRING, LEVER RETURN (Honda Code 1878289).	$3.32	$2.66

The three missing parts in the WA drawing are for shifting the transmission and without that the transmission is useless. The wheeled version has a cable that runs to that lever. It's a drawing callout mistake.