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

Hi,

I am looking for ideas on how to assemble, make-shift an auto rotate chute movement mechanism for our new 621-E. 

Background:

Toro 621-E is a great machine recently bought to replace an old two-stage Ariens that had given good service. The buyer beware caveat being that, because of an ongoing lower back injury and the nature of our property, the chute mechanism direction needs to be moved quite often. That constant motion of stopping, leaning forward to move the chute in a new direction has turned out not to be a good movement for the lower back. The Ariens had an auto chute movement control on the handle so I did not envision the problem that occurs with a manual chute movement of the new 621-E. Getting older and accumlating more aches and pains is a bee-atch. With the dollar spread being some $300+ dollars for a return of the now used 621E and attempts to sell myself (two snowfalls and $559 new) and difference in price of the Toro 621-QZE ($749 new) [wife needs electric for piece of mind], ...

Help sought:

 I am looking for help, ideas, suggestions, resources, etc. to self-assemble, install, jury-rig a mechanism that would control direction movement of the chute. 'Easier' control of the deflector is secondary.

Truly appreciate your feedback.

John

Red / Frank,

Great ideas and images. Just like a funnel of ideas pushing down to an exit solution. Again, thanks for the images. Very helpful.

Red, to confirm your description of your idea of, "If you picture two flat piece of stock (to simplify the discussion) bolted into the sides of the chute at the base, angled up, they could perhaps meet a 3rd piece which went to the up/down handle. You could conceivably make a single handle which you could swivel left/right, and also push up/down to tilt the chute up or down." I do believe your suggestion was clear to understand.

Anybody else. This is great information.

Keep 'em comin'. It's winter here in Chicago so I've plenty of inside house or garage time to work on these ideas. Ace Hardware, Menard's and Home Depot are old friends for my handy homeowners projects.

John

Since you're in Chicago area, you may be interested in giving this option a consideration.

A used Toro 221QE on CL, in Chicago western suburbs.  Here's the link.  http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/grd/2805138952.html

The caveat is since we've been having a mild winter, snowblower sales are very very slow, so you may not be able sell your 621E until next winter.

I've made an extended arm for my old toro CCR1000.  Just used a piece of Flat steel bar stock.  1/8 thick one inch to an inch and a quarter wide.  Drilled two holes through it and the current handle on the chute.
Then bolted the steel unto the top of the handle.  I also put an upwards bend in the steel before attaching it.  There is the problem as mentioned with turning the chute 90 degrees and having the handle to long.
It will hit if your trying to go along side a car or house.  So the handle can't be made as long as it would be nice to have it.  But making and installing one is really pretty easy. 
I have also put an extension arm on the chute deflector of my Toro CCR2000 so you don't have to reach so far.  It already has a hand crank chute rotator

Has anyone entertained using a collapsible handle similar to something used on a large fishing landing net?    That way, the length could be adjusted as required.

This is what I was thinking about. Please excuse the crude model, it was just to try and illustrate the concept.

You could grab one location, and swing the chute left/right, and would also be able to aim the deflector up/down. It would be more ergonomic if the two lower bars (for the chute left/right) actually extended beyond where the up/down bar connected. That way you wouldn't be trying to grab the handle right at a weird pivot where 3 things were all coming together. You could simply grab the solid end of a handle.

The design doesn't have much leverage to change the deflector angle, there's effectively about 3" moment arm.  Anyways, the Honda HS621 chute example is the most direct and simple way to do what you're after.  Over a foot long, with a mechanical advantage of at least 6X.  A little more complicated but elegant solution is from this discontinued Lawnboy Insight SS.  Too bad they don't make these anymore.  When Toro bought them out, Lawnboy was the supposed to be premium homeowner brand above Toro.  It was very a promising product line with thoughtful design.  That didn't happen very long.  Here's the picture of the snowblower.

http://www.lawnboy.com/productinfo/snowblowers/34002.html

By the way, you can see a lot of similarities in the chute on this Lawnboy compared to today's 621E.   I don't know why the Lawnboy website is still up.  Perhaps one day there will be new products.  Just hoping....

The easiest way is to add a telescoping tube to the end of the existing handle on the 621E that Borat eluded to.  Just add some dampening or friction to the sliding tubes so it stay in place until you move it.

One of my landing nets has a collapsible handle with a number of holes in the top portion of the handle.  The bottom portion as a small spring loaded button that locks the two pieces together at the desired length. 

For use on a snow blower, the collapsible handle could be spring loaded to  provide tension between the upper and lower parts and a slot  cut in the top section to allow for adjustability.  At the ends of the slot there would be indentations cut to one side to lock the handle at the desired length.  The indents should be shaped to lock the two pieces together and held there under spring tension.  If well thought out and built, it would do the job nicely and cost next to nothing if you can get an old fish net handle.

aa335 wrote:
Yeah, the Honda approach is nice. It looks like Frank's machine has a metal chute. I could see there conceivably being a problem if the plastic Toro chute didn't have enough torsional stiffness, and/or if the detents for the rotation are too strong. You could end up twisting the chute somewhat (like a spring) then having it rotate too far when it finally overcomes the detents (and the spring unwinds). Just speculating. But I don't know how stiff the chutes typically are to rotate. The detents on my Ariens are surprisingly stiff (so I could see this maybe being a problem with mine).

I like the extendable handle idea

jrtrebor wrote:

Why not use two pieces of bar stock?  Attach one to the existing handle, and attach the other bar to it at its free end, so you are making an elbow.  The bar on the handle can be relatively short, and the elbow extension can be long (all the way back to your handlebar, if you have a way to support it).  Then you eliminate the problem of clearance on the sides.

Here's a cool idea that would take a little fabrication...

Find a chute with gear teeth around its circumference (some of the two-stage machines have this, either with a manual crank or electric motor) and the associated drive gear.  Then you need a flexible cable drive system, like a dremel extension.  Then connect one end of the drive cable to the drive gear, and the other end to your 18/19v Makita/DeWalt drill up on the handle.  When you need to rotate the chute, pull the trigger on the drill.  If you need to reverse it, flip the drill into reverse.  However, you should be able to make the chute rotate 360 degrees and not need the reverse drive.

A little complicated, but you can design a whole bunch of mods from the concept (e.g. - old obsolete drill attached directly to chute with remote wires triggering the "go" switch).  I think the modern electric drives on fancy two-stage machines use this concept with servo motors, but I'm not convinced the servo motors are strong enough if the chute freezes up between outings.