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

As an example, I have an Ariens SS322 (same body as the SS522). It already has a slightly-"extended" handle, albeit not much. But if you were to stretch the concept further, that might make things easier.

One concern would be that if you make the handle long enough to reach easily, it's going to carve a huge arc as you swing the chute around 180*. You'd have to compromise to make sure the machine could still clear next to something without the handle hitting the garage or whatever, as it hangs off to the side.

If you wanted to get fancy, you might be able to make the handle able to rotate the chute, and also pivot it up & down. 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. Not much of an explanation, I know. I can try and make a picture if that would help.

This is what the handle looks like on mine. It only controls left/right, but they at least extended the handle slightly towards the operator. I believe I've seen a pic of a Honda (?) which took the concept a little further, and brought it closer to the user. There are also single stage machines with cranks to aim the chutes. The Ariens SS522 came with a crank, for instance, and it was an option on my SS322. If you only needed to aim the chute, perhaps you could find a different used single stage machine with a chute crank, even if it wasn't the Toro system. I realize that has its $$$ drawbacks, just kind of thinking out loud.

Here's a photo of my Honda HS621 with the handle that Red refered to in the previous post. This might help you to design something similar. It's fairly easy to reach from behind to swing it from one side to the other or to place it in the zero degree position.

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