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

Hello - first post! I've finally had enough of the awful quality of my Troy Bilt snowblower. The box is rusting apart and I had to replace the transmission last year. The joystick to control the plastic chute is a joke. So, I decided to search CL and found a very well kept Honda HS624TA snowblower. Love the engineering from the simple controls to the brass worm drive on the chute! What do you guys recommend I do to service it this year? What areas should be greased? What do you do to keep the box as rust free as possible? Thanks!

Frozen means rusted together.  The augers are driven by  stub shafts which protrude from the sides of the auger gear box.  The auger/shaft assembly should have a shear pin through both to allow the stub shafts to transfer power to the augers.  If you remove the shear pins, you should be able to rotate the auger freely without transferring force/movement to the stub shaft.  If the auger and stub shaft do not move freely of each other, they're likely rusted together.  If the situation isn't too severe, with the shear pins removed, you might want to take a piece of 2x2 or similar and try a bit of leverage to spin the auger.  If that doesn't provide sufficient force, use the 2x2 as a drift and hit it with a good size hammer to try to shock the auger free.  If that fails, you have two choices.  Leave it and hope you never ingest something to lock up the augers or prepare yourself for a long tedious and likely to fail, process of trying to free the augers.  Personally, from what I've read, I'd take it to a shop and let them do the work.  It will cost you that's for sure.  However, they may have techniques and equipment to do the job.

Nope - the frozen auger and the shaft will turn as a unit, but since the ager and shaft are "rust welded" the shear pin is rendered useless.  Normally, if you chew into something hard, the shear pin will...shear, allowing the motor driven shaft to continue turning while the auger is stopped.  This prevents  damage to the transmission / power train which would otherwise be subjected to a severe shock.

You can check for a frozen auger by trying to rotate the auger on the shaft - there should be enough free play so you can see it rotate just a little.  Or, better yet, just remove the shear pins and see if the augers can be manually rotated on the shaft. 

The "full dissambly" method of greasing the shaft is probably the best if there is any doubt or if there is any resistance to turning when you check em.  Otherwise, if they turn quite freely, I'd just go with the easier way - but do it at least twice a year.  Since I bought my 928 new there was no doubt so I go the "easy way".  And I check frequently to see if there is any sign of freezing.

If you decide to go the full dissasembly route, make sure you understand the procedure before you start.  After you do this, you should be gtg for quite a while if you keep up the "easy"  lubs.

Damn - that Borat is sure quick on the draw!

Also - when you put it all back together, make sure you use real shear pins and NOT just any bolt that fits.  The shear pins look a lot like regular bolts but are designed to be weak enough to break (shear) when you hit an obstruction, whereas a regular bolt may not.  It'd be good to keep a few of these on hand - you will need em sooner or later.  Get em on Ebay.

Thanks Borat and Dr. Woof - now I understand exactly what you're talking about. Guess I should have checked this before purchase LOL. I'll remove the shear pins tonight and see if it will turn. This machine is a 2001 and the previous owner said he had the dealer service it annually so we'll see if that's true. Don't want the auger tranny to blow if the shear pin is rendered useless. If it doesn't turn, I'll try Kroil and see if I can get it to loosen up. I'll let you all know.

Dr_Woof wrote:
I touch type and actually, I'm not all that bad at it.  Not really certain but mabe 45 to 50 words per minute.