Well I was finally able to get some video of my blower in action. Went out to our family cottage and one of my neighbors was kind enough to operate the camera for me.
I'm pretty satisfied with the way it performs after the repower and other modifications to the impeller blades and housing. I had also increased the auger drive pulley size from
the stock 2 3/4" to 3 1/4". Powered chute controls work great. I also came up with a way to use the old deflector control lever to operate the auger engage/ disengage.
So now I can pull on the lever engage the blower and not have to keep the right handle held down all the time. It's so much easier to use the chute control joystick and hold on
to the blower. I believe that it is also easier on the belt with fewer engage and disengage cycles.
I think it is still a little underpowered. It could probably use a 13hp instead of the 11hp. That 32" bucket takes in a lot of snow. I'd also like to increase the auger drive pulley
to a 3 1/2" just to see what happens. The one issue or component I still haven't come to a conclusion about is the impeller (14"). It has 6 blades, it's the only six bladed impeller I've
ever seen. A lot of the newer blowers and the Honda's have only three blades. I know how well the Honda's perform and I've watched a couple videos of the Ariens Compact 22
going through 14, 16" inches of light new snow without a problem. So I've been wondering if six blades is just over kill and a lot of extra mass and weight to be turning. Once you get them
spinning I guess inertia is on your side. But if three works well, and Honda first proved that they do. Then what is the advantage of 4 or 6, just don't know. One thing I do know is that.
The blade tip to housing clearance is a really important factor in blower performance. As is the impeller RPM.
Just a little information about the video. In the first section the depth was about 18" deep in the plow roll of pile. And around 14 or 15" deep everywhere else. The snow was about three day old.
Had a bottom layer (2") of heavier stuff. It had settled and was somewhat compacted and dense. Not light power by any means but also not high in moisture and wet heavy.
Any and all comments are welcomed!
This message was modified Feb 24, 2011 by jrtrebor
