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

I'm looking at a used in very nice condition Toro 824XL. It has the a different auger style than the typical one. It looks more like a drum style then the usual small shaft style. I want to know if this is a desirable model or something that i need to stay away from. Couldn't find much info on it so I resorted to the forum. Thanks guys.

Caveat: I have no experience with the drum augers, so this is purely speculation, not based on experience. But I wonder if they could more easily have problems with wet, really-packable snow?

On a few occasions, with my "standard"-auger MTD, I have gone around to the front after shutting it off, and found that snow had packed into the augers, like between the auger shaft, and the "webs" of the augers themselves. I had to scoop it out of the augers, as it was just going around in circles with the augers, and was never moving towards the impeller. This is on a fully-open auger design, which I'd expect should be better able to resist "packing in".

I've wondered if an auger with a solid face (tube/cylinder diameter), and auger webs that stick out maybe 2" beyond the drum might be prone to having that type of snow fill in the gaps between the auger webs? And basically giving you what's essentially just a big smooth cylinder of packed snow spinning around?

Again, this is just something I'd wondered about, nothing more than that.

Also, trouts2 mentioned Toro's PowerShift system. I was initially interested in that system, because it uses a geared transmission, without a friction disk, which can slip. But in doing some more reading about it, it sounds very complicated (so more prone to mechanical trouble), and those systems can apparently develop slippage in the transmission. From what I understood, that kind of slippage effectively signaled the transmission's death. So I got a machine with a good ol' friction disk system, which has a lot fewer parts, and is not able to shift the axle front/back to change the balance of the machine. I decided I'd rather have a simpler machine which should be less likely to leave me hanging in a blizzard. I'll just keep the friction disk system in good shape, to maximize its ability to keep the machine cranking forward without slipping.