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

mikiewest wrote:
I would guess that a cast iron housing would not crack quite as easily as the aluminum kind, but it would not be impossible.  But whenever you are putting power into one end of the system and stop the other end cold, something has to give.  In that case it was the housing and the gear.  Could be that, with a housing that did not ceack, the expensive worm gear would have been done in too, so maybe it didnt make much difference to the overall repair cost.  Could even be that the housing cracked and saved some engine damage too, and that would have been an additional very expensive repair..

If you pull something bad into the blower.  And your augers are frozen on the shaft.  Something expensive is going to break. 

And it's gonna cost you lotsa money.

jrtrebor wrote:
That machine does look a bit worn and exposed to a lot of salt.  Anyways, that's is a good video to see what's involved in taking it apart.  Seems very straightforward to do.  It's not necessary to add grease zerks since only a small amount is needed at the union of the auger and the short shaft. 

I had my HS624WA for 10 years and never had any issues with the shafts getting frozen like is shown in that video. I  used to live at the bottom of a hill that got salted pretty good as it was just before an intersection. What I used to do to counter the effects of the heavily salted EOD was to do that area first. I would go straight to the EOD driveway area from the back of my property and go at it til it was done. I would then clear all the other areas of my property where it was all virgin snow free of any salt. This allowed the bucket area to be "flushed" clean of all that salt and prevent rust and corrosion from forming. I guess it worked because whenever I threw a shear pin (which was not too often), the augers would spin freely. That said, it is still a good idea to grease or oil that area every once in a while to minimize the chances of the two surfaces rusting together

I do the same as you FrankMA, start out with the EOD first and flush out the snowblower with clean snow afterwards.  It's good for the snowblower and plus you don't drag all that salty/sandy muck into the garage.  My HS1132 is going on 4 years now, I take out the shear bolts and spin the auger before storage and after coming out storage just to make sure it's spinning freely.  My machine is light residential use so that is sufficient to detect any problems.