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

For single stage users, can these be used on end of driveway hard chunks? I hear you can break it up first with a shovel but seems there would still be hard chunks. Would it beat up the machine? I live in New England and because of several different factors I have to compromise and the single stage Toro 621 would be my best compromise right now. I have a driveway that is a little over 2 cars long and do a run of about 10 yards by the mailbox all EOD and clear out an area going to the deck in back on one side and for the oil man on the other that would both be over grass one about 10 yards long and the other about 15 yards long. Have you ever done EOD with one of these.

Better yet, let's see how she looks after two hours wrestling with a big two stage machine.  I know that after cleaning a large snowfall, I have to change all of my clothes because they're usually soaked with sweat and I'm in pretty good shape.   Two stage machines certainly have their place.  However, from my experience a SS machine seems to see far more work than my large frame Simplicity.  

It's nice to have both and when you think of it, if you have the space, you should.  I think I paid $75.00 for that old Craftsman SS machine and it's an excellent little snow mover when the rpms are cranked up.

Tried to put in a hyper link but it doesn't work.  You'll have to cut and paste.

This is what $75.00 can do for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5SUqWz0j8w

People think that because you're using a piece of OPE that what you're doing is an easy task. They fail to realize that it just makes the arduous task a bit easier than it used to be before OPE. I'm in pretty good shape and can say first hand that if you're not able to bull around a 250 lb. machine for 2 - 3 hours at a time after a 24" snow storm, you better farm out your snow clearing duties to someone who is up to the task. I come in after clearing a typical mid-winter New England snowstorm and am soaked in sweat and beat down like a dog. A quick shower and 2 shots of brandy (not neccessarily in that order) and I'm about ready for the rack.

Ha, I'm glad I'm not the only one. My 2-stage sure beats shoveling, that's for sure! But I'll admit that I'd kind of had enough after clearing the driveway after a few of the storms last winter. Between wrestling it around at the end of a pass, or fighting with it to keep it going straight, it still takes something out of you. I'm hoping that the new blower, with a differential, will make it so I'm not fighting the machine as much.

borat, nice video! I'm still considering rigging up a throttle "override" like you did. But I want to see how my SS performs "stock" first. As long as I won't destroy the engine by revving it higher, then I don't have a problem doing it.

Yo Red:

If the engine is in any kind of decent condition, it should handle the revs.  Two cycle engines love to rev.  No valves, cams, springs or rockers to worry about. 

That engine of yours might be a bit tricky to over-ride the governor.  Vane type governors don't offer much resistance and will require a light touch.  The Tecumseh engines I have are equipped with mechanical governors which are easy to rig and use.  If you do manage to get yours rigged up, let us know how you do it. 

Your engine is 87 ccs right?   Do you know what the stock operating rpms are supposed to be?   I'd guess that it's probably around 4500 rpm or possibly more and likely rated for 3 h.p.   I'd estimate that if you spin it up to 6500 to 7000, the engine will put out closer to 5 h.p.  Nice little boost.  The difference will be noticeable.  Believe me.  That old Craftsman is pretty much limped dick running at 4000 rpm or less.  Totally different machine when the engine is spun up. 

I bought that machine back in January and it chewed up a belt shortly after buying it.  I took it in and opened it up to find a broken motor mount.  I fixed that and picked up a $7.00 belt at NAPA which was considerably cheaper than the $53.00 Sears wanted.   Many say that these cheaper belts won't hold up as well as the Craftsman belts.  Maybe so but, I ran the cheap belt all last year pretty hard and it's got a few hours on it this year already on an engine putting out close to double the power and much more speed.  It will be interesting to see how long it holds up.

We received about five or six inches of fairly light snow last night.  I did front and back driveways with the Craftsman.  That's pretty much the entire area that I need to be cleared and it's a fair bit.   Did it without a hitch.

  

My Toro 1028 is a gem to use and turns easily but it's still work doing the driveway in 1.5 hours and I am usually soaked either from sweating or blown snow or both.

It's fun to use but after a season I'm ready to put it away for another year.

Excellent memory & guesses, borat. It's 98cc, 3hp, the manual says 4300 RPM. I have the governor adjusted to 4600 RPM currently. You're correct, it has a vane-type governor. I'd thought about trying to find a way add a bit more tension to the governor spring, to raise the RPMs on demand.

It now occurs to me that I could sort of take the opposite approach. Mess with the governor to get it to, say, 6000 RPM. That way the max speed (the potentially damaging end of the spectrum) is still governed. Then add something to *lower* the speed on demand (that could potentially be simpler, since the idle stop would hopefully keep you from being able to go too low and stalling). One of my concerns with trying this is accidentally over-revving it. Either by being dumb, or having something like my cable get stuck, and winding it up to 10,000+ with no load. Might blow a connecting rod or something.

I'll try it in a storm or two first and see how it goes. Unfortunately, with the engine being completely buried under the big cover, you can't access any of this stuff without taking the machine apart. I can't even hook up a tachometer without opening it up. I guess I could have left a wire wrapped around the plug wire, and had it dangle out of the cover somewhere (so I could just alligator-clip the tach to that wire), but I didn't think of that at the time :) It does seem really weird to me to have the engine so inaccessible. Even just trying to do something like use starting fluid would be interesting, never mind simply pulling the spark plug to look at it. I never realized how much I take that for granted on 2-stages.

My 221Q has a small cover over the carb to make access easier.  The Craftsman has to have the entire top cover taken off which is bit of work.   Not something you want to do on a cold day.   When the belt blew back in January, I brought the machine into the basement where it's nice and warm and went completely over the machine including carb dis-assembly and cleaning.  Pulled the exhaust off to inspect cylinder condition and exhaust port/muffler for carbon.  Checked compression, fuel lines etc.  Fortunately, everything looked good other than the belt and broken motor mount.  


Motor mount repair.  The gray plate replaced the cracked mount which is part of the chassis and was welded to the handle upright.
I was lucky to have a piece of plate already bent to use as a mount gusset.  Just had to drill holes in it that matched holes already on the engine and handle upright and grind out the semi circle for the crank.
You can see the string attached to the governor lever.


Look just left and below of the string and you'll see the cracked motor mount.



1997 Craftsman SS.  Busy looking dash.  Note "throttle string".  I have to say, this machine is most fun to use when the rpms are cranked up.  The Toro 221 is a better machine all the way around but with fixed rpm, it's not nearly as interesting to use.   I usually grab this machine first because it's light, strong and fun.

Operating a 2 stage snowblower, especially larger ones above 30" wide, is a very physical work.  After using the machine for 2 hours, I can say that I'm exhausted while the beast still wants more.  But overall, operating any 2 stage snowblower requires a lot more skill and concentration than a SS.   It has much more power, heavier, more complex.  Any lapse of concentration not scanning the area in front and the snowblower might end up ingesting something solid that may cause damage to machine or property, or even injury.  Even backup the snowblower, you can pin yourself against a wall.  When tacking EOD, the snowblower naturally wants to climb and reverse cartwheel in front of you.  Most people who encounter this have to think about slowing down even more or manhandle it so that the bucket doesn't come up.

Some people are uncomfortable operating a 2 stage snowblower, and maybe more so with women.  Not trying to be a sexist, but I haven't seen even one woman operating a 2 stage in my area.  I've seen a few women operating a SS, but those are rare too.  So the video portraying a woman just holding on a 2 stage snowblower handles and following behind it with ease like a baby stroller through an empty parking lot just going straight is inaccurate.

It would be funny if someone could do a spoof of their video.  One that shows a small stature person operating a 36" snowblower, running across the pavement and catching the scraper bar on the cracks, and having the handle bars nailing the groin.   Also showing how a person clears and frozen ingested newspaper, changing shear pins in the dark, clearing a clog without getting their hands amputated.

I enjoy using the 2 stage but I never forget there is a lot more risks involved, and it is not as easy as it seems.

Got some snow here finally.  Not much maybe three inches, fine, heavy and a bit moist.  The stuff at the end of the driveway was a mixture of slush and snow.  Did the entire driveway with the old Craftsman SS then tackled the EOD which was maybe 18" high.  

The picture below is a screen grab from a video so you'll have to excuse the quality.  Nonetheless, it gives some idea of the distance that the Craftsman can throw fairly heavy snow when it's on the revs.