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

I have finished my conversion this weekend.   Took me a lot of try and error to find the right length belts.   For whoever wants to do the same conversion in the future, I have two things to note:

 1. The driving belt length is critical.  I bought one that fit but the idler pulley touched the metal rod that engages/disengages the auger.  It happened when auger disengaged.  I could not figure it out why originally.  I thought something needed adjustment but it turned out that the driveling belt is too short caused the idler pulley not in the right position.  36” is what I used at the end.

2. The new mounting holes can be drilled a little more closer to the auger.  The crankshaft pulley can be shifted on the crank shaft to line up with the auger and driving pulleys.  I had the crank shaft pulley at the end of the crank shaft when I did the measurement so the engine sits a little too far back towards the handle bar.  I don’t know if that will make it back heavy when blowing snow.

Now I just need to make a belts cover.  to complete.

JoelKlein wrote: Thanks for your comments.
I am thinking about producing belt covers.  Actually I'm working on the finial version of one today. 
For making the serrated augers.  I made a pattern out of thick card stock.  Traced off of an auger on a blower at Home Depot.  Took the augers off my blower.  Traced the pattern onto my augers using a lacquer pencil.  Then used a 4 1/2" right angle grinder with a .045 metal cutting disc to cut the teeth into the augers.  I made a jig to hold the augers in the vertical position while doing the cutting.
Screwed a pipe flange to a work bench.  Threaded in a 30" long piece of pipe and then slide the auger onto the pipe.  Made all of the short cuts first, then the long angle cuts.
The holding jig allows you to spin the auger as your working on it.  It also makes it easier to paint them when your finished. Paint one side, slide it off the pipe flip it over paint
the other side.

A lot of good work here, you did a fantastic job.  It should be a great performer too.

jrtrebor wrote: 

jrtrebor, so you"re the guy that inspired me to convince my son to modify his 1993 Ariens ST824 augers.   I did the exact same thing you did.  I went to Home Depot and drew the auger pattern on some cardboard, then we did exactly what you did.  I hope you don't mind me mentioning your post about it.  The pictures tell the story well. 

http://www.abbysguide.com/ope/discussions/59639-0-1.html

Our little project is done so far as the augers being ground.  We have to get the blower back together, but he is so busy at his job.  Well, I still have my blower to help him out if needed.

            
     Partway done with the grinding                 Done with the grinding #1                      Done with the grinding #2

Thanks for sharing your earlier posting about how you did this project.  Anybody can do it as my pictures illustrate.  We still have to sand and paint.

jrtrebor wrote:
Thanks!.  Yeah, it was a lot of work, mostly just the time, as you already know, but it sure does take a good eye and a steady hand to make sure the cutting blade goes where you want it to.  Like you said in your original post in October, it took a couple of hours.  The noise from the grinder is very annoying, but I had those 3M headset-style earmuffs from ACE hardware that kept my ears safe.  The end result is the reward, though.  It makes me appreciate your own project on that ST1032 a lot more.   The lighting in my son's basement is 8 can lights.  It really lights up the place.  About 25 feet by 12 feet.  It's currently in the final stages of its own remodeling.

Extra mentions:  You might notice the greenish-looking impeller.  He got a new replacement.  The old one had a bent tip (about a 30-degree bend), and the rest was dinged and dented around some of the blade edges.  Too rough for a Clarence kit.  He's going to sand and repaint the housing where it needs it, not a total strip and paint because the rest is pretty nice yet.  We also adjusted the chain slack in the gearbox, greased it inside and on the auger shafts, put in a new pulley belt and two new lower handlebars (the old ones were stress-cracked at the bottoms where they attached to the body!), and installed a new friction disc due to bad rubber on the old one causing some slippage.  All else looks very fine, but we're going to re-check the belt pulleys.  It would have been fun to have put a new Briggs on it (maybe a 305cc instead of a 250cc, just to give it a little boost).  My son has the headlight on it now, but it would be nice to also have a remote deflector kit installed on it, though the current manual approach isn't so bad.

I wonder if either of your gentlemen would be kind enough to provide us with the distance between the tip of each tooth and the depth of the valleys?

Thanks

Wow! love that machine, wished I could try this now, a touch of class congradulation for the super work. Denis

GtWtNorth wrote:
I just happened to see this old post near the top of the list of threads, then saw your post.  I got out my cardboard template that I used at Home Depot to measure an Ariens Platinum 30 blower to give you the measurements you were asking about.

The "valleys" are .5 inch.  From "tip to tip" it is 2.5 inches.  Also realize that the "tip" has that little flat spot, which is, interestingly enough, also .5 inch.  They could have designed it to be at a right angle, but this looks better.  I'm counting from where each valley comes back up to the top, ignoring that little flat spot.  I hope what I just said is clear.

You should do the same thing we did by taking a small piece of cardboard into Home Depot, find a Platinum 30 blower, and take your pencil or pen to trace it.  Hold the cardboard very tightly behind or in front of the auger and then draw carefully without letting the cardboard slip at all, and you should have no problem.  My piece of cardboard is 10.5 inches long and 4 inches high.  I then cut it out with scissors so my son and I could trace the pattern onto his auger with a silver grease pen. 

To be honest, the Platinum 30 auger is slightly bigger than the auger on my son's Ariens ST824.  However, when  applying the template to his auger, we just sort of rotated the template a tiny bit when needed as we went along to accomodate the difference.  It doesn't have to be an exacting rocket-science kind of thing, but believe me, it came out really well. 

Hope this helps.  Let us know what happens if you're entertaining the idea of converting your auger.

Here's the original thread that started me on this project:  http://www.abbysguide.com/ope/discussions/59639-0-1.html

Happy New Year.  I am a brand new member here.  Your machine in particular caught my eye.  Was thinking of doing some modification to my blower chute similar to your first metal shields that you experimented with.  I was wondering what your impression was of that setup as opposed to your current stainless setup ??   What do you think of a one-piece covering, verses an open channel down the center, such as you have ??  Did either modification induce any new flexure or vibration points ??   What an incredibly neat job you did on that !!!  Congrats !!!
-Eric