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

Does anyone know why the Toro company stopped using the barrel auger? and if so why did they start using them, and what was the prupose of that design? todays models do not seem to use them any longer. thanks 

I have used them so I can offer my opinions on the matter.
I only used it for 1 year and this year I picked up a larger Ariens with the traditional augers, though we have not had any significant snow to test the differences.

Pros:
The design seems like it might be stronger and more duarable.
The large hallow area pretty much means they will never rust to the shaft. (No need to grease them.)
The larger profile seemed like it made them less likely to pick up foreign objects.

Undecided:
The barrel shape has the affect of limiting the snow intake as to not overload the machine.

Cons:
The barrel shape gives it the potential to ride up on hard packed snow.
The shear bolts that they use are somewhat harder to get to, but that wasn't really a problem for me.  (They are technically grade 5 bolts as Toro doesn't use shear bolts.)

Good assement Shryp. 

I'm iffy on the Toro barrels not because I don't like them or had problems though.  It's because I don't understand the design.  I've used many of the older bulldog Toros and a hand full of the later designs and never had a problem, never had a pin break.  The later designs were the smaller tear drop shape and the newer full bucket style.  All pretty good with the teardrop type being not as good overall as the old and newer full bucket types. 

The older Toro's I drove hard into hardpack and was very rough with them forcing them to hangup and stall but never broke a pin.  I'd lift the machine way up by the handles forcing it down into piles.  Possibly I never broke a pin with them because of the good design.  ??  The older machines were excellent diggers and the newer very good also.  I could never find a reason to fault the barrel design and as they always performed very well it may have been due to the barrel design. 

The change may have been due to the amount of metal involved.  Lots of meat there and lots of weight to take energy away from the engine.  That weight probably helped to keep the bucket down. 

A few dealers have told me to use regular bolts when replacing pins.  I can't remember anyone having a problem related to pins on a Toro i.e. did not break and the gearbox broke.   I have seen mangled gearbox gears which may have been because the pin did not break but could also have been to extreme use.  ?  

Here are some pictures of mine.  The original Tecumseh was leaking oil pretty bad so I switched out to the Greyhound.
I did lose a "shear bolt" and am not sure if it broke or it it vibrated loose.  I never found any part of the old one.  I pulled the
one out of the other side to match up when getting replacements and it was pretty bent.  The remaining one was a
grade 5 bolt and it now has 2 new grade 5 bolts in it.  Some research online indicates that these use normal bolts
and not shear bolts.  The street plows seem to push a lot of chucks of asphalt into the EOD, so I ended up getting
pieces of the street stuck in it many times.  I had the belt adjusted slightly loose, so that probably helped save the gears.

Nice.  Going wide on old Ariens machines sometimes work but on other models the angle change is too much for the holder at the side of the chute. 

Yours works.  Did it just work or did you move the chute holder?  

Going to that engine must have made a huge improvement.  What do you see with the 6.5 OHV?

Do you ever have problems with winterization or snow in the carb linkage area?

The linkage spring is not the best quality and exposed.  The guy up the street bought an Ariens refitted with a HF 6.5.  He was leaving it outside uncovered and rust got formed on the spring.  The second year I noticed and put grease on it.  He now keeps it the garage. 

The tires on those I thought were not good grippers.  Later Toro's came with big spiked tires which I think super.   Maybe they are fine for your area but if you need grip you could easily pickup a spiked set probably cheaper than chains. 

I now realize that's a 21.  What a tirger for a small footprint.  Lots of people looking for small footprint machines to save on garage space. 

Two Toro dealers said use regular bolts in Toro barrel types.  The local Honda said use off the regular bolts for the Honda. 

I had no problems with the engine winterizing.  I am in Cleveland, OH and it isn't terribly cold or wet during the winter.  I also keep it in the garage.  It was replaced early January of last year because the Tecumseh ran itself out of oil after half a tank of gas.  It didn't lock up or throw a rod, it just simply stuttered and died like it ran out of gas.  With oil in it again it did run.  It didn't seem to run all that great to begin with anyway.  It spit black smoke out the exhaust a lot.  It was probably just the carb needing some adjustments, but I figured with all the problems it would be cheaper to just toss a $100 engine on it and forget it.

I got the blower for free, so for $100 it was a cheap and easy fix.  This year it was downgraded to backup machine so I don't care about the tires.  It is actually for sale on craigslist right now, but the only offer I got was from a guy offering $70 through email.

Since I don't plan on keeping it I don't care about the tires.  The grip was always good enough, but they did spin a few times when hitting packed down tire tracks.

The 3.5 did bog down and/or stall a few times.  I think that was mainly a combination of old, underpowered 3.5HP, poorly adjusted carb...

The 6.5 never even noticed a load on it.  I used to be able to take snow the full 17"deep x 21"wide and start pushing it 3 feet in front of the blower because I was going to fast.

I picked up an old Ariens 924xxx series 8/24 last fall for $20 that is my new machine.  Then again that one managed to throw a rod on the first real snowfall.  Guess that engine was neglected in the past.  I decided to go overboard and replace it with the 11 HP Greyhound and it seems great, but we have not had any snow since.

Then for Christmas my grandparents decided to give me their 8.5HP 26"Troy Built that they bought about 3 years ago.  They are getting too old and are now just paying someone else to do their snow removal.  I think I am going to keep the Ariens though, it seems better.  No snow here, so have not had a chance to try them head to head to see how I like them yet.  The Troy Built has a locked axle and low chute crank, neither of which I care for.  The Ariens will probably need some weight added to the bucket, because the engine now sits a bit further back and is heavier than the old HM80.

Now I have too many blowers, so reason for getting rid of the Toro.

Here is the thread about the Ariens:
http://www.abbysguide.com/ope/discussions/52690-0-1.html

I have no pictures of the Troy Built.

What does that pointed to thread look like on your monitor.  Even with wrap it blows out the thread.  The reading is a mile to the right.

You can adjust the pictures to be top to bottom rather than all across which screws things up.

If you get lost on where the curser is it's where you think it should be but hard to see.  For example when it's 1 line above give a down arrow to get on the picture line.  One right arrow should take you to the right of the first picture.  Give it a and enter and all the pictures to the right should drop down a line and the first picture above.  I think at that point you could just right arrow and return through the rest to put them all top to bottom which will bring back the formatting.

The other thread looked fine to me.  All the pictures were stacked on on top of the other.  Are you saying on your screen they all showed up next to each other?

I went through and added a blank line between each one, maybe that will help you.  They are 800x600 instead of 640x480.

Yep, that makes the thread readable.  Before the thread expanded about 9 times to the right.  Lines of text were 9 pagefulls to the right so single line of very long length way off screen. 

Not sure what threads format differently for you.  Some browsers have the option to reformat large items to be smaller.  That is things that cause the scrowlbars to come up.  Photos do it, very long URS's that go longer than a page will do it and big PDF's also.  There a lots of things that cause scrowlbars to come up.  Usualy people do not what that as a default so the option is usually not set in browsers.  In Opera it's not.  In IE it's not.  In Opera it works.  In IE it does not for pictures in Abbys so depending on someones browser settings big Abbys pictures may or may not blow out the firmatting.  It's probably off by default in most browsers as it will distort many more things than it cures.

The 800 blow out the thread.  640 would have been better. 

Nice job on the cover.  Did you just bend that by hand without a break?

I did the same 11 on a mid 80's 924nnn.  The tractor had pre-drilled holes for the engine but the crankend still ended up 1/4 in too long for the cover.  The toss was improved 5 to 20 feet depending on conditions over the old motor.  It was super compared to the old engine at EOD or wet snow and tossed it like dry snow. 

Yep, lots of bodes out there cheap that are good candidates for the HF motors. 

>>I figured the 11 would be just as reliable. 

It should be.  I also used to get the warrenties but I bought so many it was enough to pay for a motor so I bought a motor as a spare.  Should anyone have an issue I'll give them a new motor. 

All in all what I found was the 6.5s improved the tossing about 10 feet over the old 7hp engines.  They keep right up or better 8hp ST924's from the 80s and 90s.  A fresh 6.5 OHV should and does.  I love planting them.  They are very good in wet grey snow with lots of power. 

The cover is just roof flashing bent by hand with a few sheet metal screws holding it to the old plastic cover.  I cut the top off like jrtrebor did.  The one thing that has me a little worried is I bolted a piece of 1x2 wood to the top 2 holes on the engine block as a backing for the new cover.  I wonder if the engine will get too hot for the wood.  On the other hand, the old cover was plastic so it should be all right.  I think the cover is rigid enough now that it doesn't need the back brace though.  The piece of wood is how I got the top to look so square.