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

Hi, all.  Great site.  Everyone in the Northeast survive the latest Mother Nature Halloween prank?

I acquired an ST824 with low hours.  I inspected the whole thing, replacing fuel lines, spark plug, belts, did a carb rebuild.  Lubed and adjusted everything.  It appears that the impeller shaft is spinning on the bearing (and the bearing is not).  I split the attachment from the tractor but still can't get the belt pulley to free from the impeller shaft.  The impeller appears to have one of the "blades" bent back about a half an inch or so.  Anyone offer any help to taking the pulley off to get access to the bearing?

Hopefully the shaft is not worn in that area.

Here's the part:
05406300 Bearing-Ball 0.750 x 1.750 x 0.50

Model 924082 (Serial #031226)

Thanks for any advice.

By the way, my resurrected 18-year old Toro CCR1000 performed well with the slush yesterday.  Love that little ball of hate, single stage machine.

Someone else was rebuilding one of those and ended up snapping the ears off hub using a gear puller and needed to cut it off with a dremel.  Had to buy a new hub.  The shaft is going to be a problem.  Ariens no longer sells the shafts so you will need to buy a used one, an old shaft/worm gear combo, or a whole new gearcase.  The gearcase goes for about $200.  If it is bad you might be able to find a machine shot to fix it.  Maybe tack weld it to the new bearing?  Not sure if you could do that without damaging the bearing though.

Shryp - Is right you can snap the ears of the hub, it's cast.  Have removed many of those.  Sometimes there can be two problems.  Getting the set screws loose and getting the pulley off.
Having the pulley off makes it much easier to get to the set screws.  An allen socket works really well  It allows you to get down to the set screw using a short extension and it doesn't flex like and allen wrench does. Which gives you a much better feel.  Make sure the allen socket is clean.  Use a pick, awl whatever you have to scrape out the hole to it's depth. Some type of penetrating oil on the screw doesn't hurt.
I've had to drill them out before as well. 
Once the set screws are out, one way or another.  Put a little penetrating oil or what ever you have into each hole, let it sit for a couple of minutes. 

I have found that sometimes tapping the hub a little further on the shaft can break it loose just enough.  I know that driving it further on the shaft seems like the wrong thing to do. But the jarring blow can help to get it to move and break loose.  Don't just bang on the back of the hub with a hammer. Use a socket, short piece of pipe with an ID at least as large as the shaft diameter.  But not to large in diameter that it's larger than the hubs... hub.  Don't bang on the hub ears they will snap right off.
Just don't bang it on the shaft tight against the bearing.  Just get it to move a little.  Then tip the blower housing up on it's front face.  The weight of the impeller, shaft gear box, and augers are now working for you. They are all hanging from the stuck pulley hub.  Find something that you can slide underneath the hub ears to give a little support to the hub. That way all the weight and the blow from the hammer isn't being absorbed by the impeller bearing alone. (you can try a puller at this point but it has to have three legs. A two leg puller can work??? but doesn't put even pull on the hub. The problem with a puller is that you don't have enough room to get the puller hooks hooked on the hubs... hub.  You can only get it hooked on the brittle ears).
Use a large bolt, socket, piece of pipe or large punch.  About the size of the shaft and bang on the end of the shaft. Hard but not to hard.  Look for the pulley to have moved back to where it was before you banged it further on the shaft. If it did, hit on the shaft once again and see if it moved a little more.  If it did then hit it again. If it only moved back to the start point after two or three hits, then roll the housing back down and drive the pulley back on the shaft again, just a little.
Little more oil the the set screw holes. It can be a rather slow process at first, but you just want to get the pulley moving no matter how little in the beginning. When it starts to free up, you can hit it more times and maybe a little harder.  Move it back and forth don't try and just drive it off at one time or you will really get it stuck. And you will have to get the cutting tools out.

If the impeller shaft has been worn down in diameter by the inner bearing race to where it is sloppy.   Any decent machine shop can build that area back up with weld and then grind it and file it back to the right diameter.  Or if you wanted to take the impeller off and pull the gear box apart you could take them just the shaft.  They could build it up and put the shaft on a lathe and turn it.
Good luck, just be patient.  A bigger hammer is not the solution.

Thanks for the tips.  What about heating the hub with a propane torch?  Would that not break the bond between the hub and the shaft by expanding the hub as it heats?  One thing that concerns me about hitting the hub is that energy is directed right into the gearbox.  Seems risky.

manjestic wrote:
You can heat it, wouldn't hurt.  Sometimes it helps.  You just don't want to get to much heat into the shaft or it will obviously expand as well.  You can also roll the blower up on it's face and put some penetrating oil
in the key way slot and let it sit a while.  Before you start trying to remove the pulley.  Yea, you don't want to hitting it too hard (no small sledge hammers).  Just firm strikes with a ball peen hammer.  
After a couple of blows, you'll know.  It's either going start to move or it's not.  You want to hit it hard enough to over come the weight of the hub on the shaft. Not so hard that you also overcome the weight of the shaft
and the impeller.  Then you could be directing to much energy into the gear box.

I should have the attachment housing on it's opening and the auger, gearbox and impeller disconnected from the housing and suspended by its own weight before striking, yes?

manjestic wrote: Sorry my post are so long. What your trying to do can sometimes be a difficult process. The outcome will hopefully be that you're able to get the hub off without
damaging anything else.
Yes, roll the housing onto it's front side.  The pulley would then be on top, you'd be looking down at it.
Yes you can remove the bolts on both sides that screw into the ends of the auger shaft.   Then remove the three bolts on each side that hold the auger bushing
flanges to the blower housing.  Then remove the flanges.  It might be easier to remove the flanges with the housing before you roll it up on it's face.
Once the flanges are off and the housings rolled up on it's face. Check to make sure that there is some space between the augers and the floor.  If there are
resting on the floor.  You will need to raise the entire housing up, just slide a piece of wood under each side of the housing.  You want the augers, gear case,
impeller shaft and impeller to be kind of dangling from the pulley hub.  You don't need to raise the housing way just enough so that the augers aren't in contact
with the floor 1/2" 3/4".  If possible try and find something that you can use to slide under or in between the pulley hub and the housing / bearing flanges.
Two pieces of steel, flat steel bar, one leg of a piece of angle iron. There is not much room which is the problem.  But having something under there helps support
the hub. So that when you hit on the shaft. The energy isn't absorbed by the give in the bearing below and the flex of the housing.  In a perfect world you would want the
hub to be solid in place to it can't move down when the shaft is struck.  Your trying to drive the shaft down and out of the hub. If the hub moves down with the shaft when
you hit it. Not much is being accomplished.
It's also possible that the impeller shaft is also frozen in the impeller bearing inner race. 
If it's not, then the whole assembly could and hopefully will just drop out of the pulley hub.  If it is frozen you need to know that when you start banging on the
end of the shaft inside the pulley hub. A lot of the impact is going to be absorbed by the bearing the bearing flange and the housing around that area.
So depending on how hard you decide to continue hitting it.  You could bend or distort the bearing flanges themselves. I think they are around $10.00 or less for the pair.
So in the process keep that in the back of your mind.  Remember your just looking for the pulley hub to move a little 1/8 or 3/16 of an inch. When it does roll the housing back
down and tap it back on that amount.  Work it back an forth using some type of lube in the key way slot and set screw holes as you go. When it starts to move a little freer
you can attempt to drive it a little further off. Next time it's up on the front of the housing. Don't let the augers ever just rest on the floor.  They need room to drop as the hub
starts to come off.  Also, as you go make sure that the auger shaft is not getting hung up in the housing holes on either side.  The last 1/2 before the hub comes off can
sometimes be where it get really tight again. You may have to hit the shaft pretty hard.  But not like your driving in a railroad spike.  Don't mushroom the end of the shaft.
If you get it to the point where the hub is sliding off.  Before you take it all the way off. I would roll the housing of it's face. And then remove the hub from the shaft entirely.
That way you can then pull everything out the front of the housing rather than having it falling out as you are rolling it of it's face.  You can use a puller on the hub if you get it
moving back and forth on the shaft.  I sometimes use one to get the hub off that last 1/4 to 3/8.  But I try and get the hooks of the puller on the hubs... hub.
Not on the ears.  Use the ears only if it doesn't take much effort to get the hub to move when tightening the puller.  Or you will break one off.  Good Luck!

I appreciate all the detail.

I've removed the three nuts that secure the pulley to the hub.  I've been soaking the hub and pulley with penetrating oil for about two weeks now an cannot get the pulley to separate from the hub using caveman techniques.  I'm going to rig up a puller, if I can locate one at one of the local auto parts chains via the tool loaner programs.  I was looking at something called a harmonic balancer pulley puller.  Not sure what's so harmonic about it but, hey...

Holy shnikeys!  That was a beeyach!  But I finally got the hub off.  The pulley is still frozen to the hub.  I went to Autozone and picked up a harmonic balancer pulley puller and some 5/16" coupler nuts at the hardware store.  I screwed the coupler bolts into the pan head bolts that go through the hub to hold the pulley to the hub.  Then I screwed the bolts that come with the puller to the coupler nuts and started turning.  I heated the hub with a propane torch.  Finally the thing made a loud bang moved a smidge on the shaft.  Little by little, loud bang by loud bang the hub finally came off. 

I was right.  The bearing was toast.  Thankfully, the shaft does not appear to be worn very much.  Perhaps some epoxy or Loctite will keep the new bearing inner race in tight contact with the shaft.

When I put the hub back on you can bet I'll use plenty of anti-seize compound.  Anyone have a favorite place to get a replacement bearing?  How about the auger bushings?

MFGSupply is probably the cheapest.
You could also try Jack's Small Engines or Amazon.

The bearing would probably be cheaper from a bearing supply place since it is a common size and they charge more for the "Ariens" ones.

I'd go for 1 of these:
http://www.mfgsupply.com/snowblower/snowblowerariens/9-487-h2.html

2 of these:
http://www.mfgsupply.com/snowblower/snowblowerariens/9-8446.html

5-10 of these:
http://www.mfgsupply.com/snowblower/snowblowerariens/41-916.html

Make sure the augers are not rusted to the shaft too.  Otherwise the shear bolts are kind of useless.

While you are at it check the drive train for excessive wear too.   I have been noticing a lot of posts recently about people with Ariens blowers with the drive axle and sprocket bushings/bearings so wore out that the gears are slipping.  If you use jackssmallengines.com, put the part numbers into their search box as they only list the common stuff they stock, but they can order most anything.  Jack's search requires the leading 0 and trailing two 0s on the Ariens part numbers.  They added those somewhat recently so to convert the old part numbers and new part numbers just add the zeroes.  If you are doing internet searches search for both ways as some places list one way and some places list the other.  (55035 = 05503500)

And if you are feeling adventurous you could try one of these:
Impeller Kit

Ariens used two different types of bearings for the impeller.  One looks like a regular bearing where the outer circumference surface of the bearing is flat. 
The other type has a slight curve to it.  It's higher in the center of the race.  If you have the first type you can get one at Fastenal.  I just bought one there last week
I think it was like $.4.50.  If you have the curved type you'll have to buy the Ariens part online or from a dealer.