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

Big thanks to all of you who championed the ss blower, I'm a convert. I used to sneer at those little under powered sissy toys, but no more.
We had a good 8-10 inches of very light snow overnight and the plow had passed, so there was about 3-4 inches of denser snow deeper than the opening of the blower. Fired her up, let her warm up for a couple of minutes and started cautiously. WOW, she threw like a champ, at least 20 to 30 feet, and she's not even Boratified yet! Slowed a bit when pushed hard but never stalled.
She's an MTD 4.5 / 21 with electric start and the Tecumseh HSK845 (DOM 2002). Picked it up at the local recycle yard for $40 (I know I paid too much). The compression seemed good at 93 lbs., so I put in some gas and she fired right up. As soon as she shut down, the carb started to leak a lot. So I put her away for the summer & ordered some paddles, belt and scraper bar from fleabay (shoulda ordered the carb kit too).
So mid november I went to the local small engine shop and bought a carb kit, 2 ft. of fuel line, clamps, a shutoff valve and a carb to intake gasket (might have been something else). When he said $90, I thought he was joking, but no! Since I waited till the last minute, he had me (won't do that again).
Now I'm into it for about $170, so that takes some of the shine off my deal, but she throws so well and is so easy to handle, I can't be too sad. May try and take a video if I get the chance.

Did anyone else get snow?

Cheers
Paul

What's SNOW?? Yes we did about 8" and is of the crusty variety. A little tuff to get under it but it sure flies far out of the shoot.

12" in Upstate NY (Schenectady) - light power snow.  2-stage Ariens threw it a mile - well a  1/2 mile !

Welcome to the SS club.  Everyone loves the manly beast 2 stage, but the SS is by far my favorite snowblower.  They are quite capable machines, not as depicted by that guy on the Arien's youtube channel.  Just learn how to use it properly and it then you will appreciate it.  Kind of ironic but 2 years after Ariens put up that video showcasing the weakness of a SS against a 2 stage Snotek, they came out with a SS of their own.  For $600, I rather spend it on a Toro SS rather than a Snotek 2 stage.

We got snow here 4 times in the last two weeks.  Each time it was about 2-4 inches of snow.  Not big enough snowfall to bring out the 2 stage snowblower, but it was a perfect job for a single stage. 

Good to hear you appreciate the SS machine.   Forty buck is a great deal!  You got shafted for the carb kit etc.  You probably only needed to take the carb apart, clean it and put it back together nice and tight.

I've been flogging the Murray on the driveway and MTD is doing it's usual duty on the deck.  We have close to three feet of snow now.  Two storms early in December back to back gave us two feet of dense snow.  Too much for the SS machines.  Had to put the Simplicity to work on the driveway.  Got another foot of real fluffy stuff yesterday.  The forecast was for 2 cm????   Got to wonder whose doing the forecasting?   I just shoveled it all to the sides then threw it with the Simplicity.

borat wrote:
Just wondering why you had to shovel? I'm sure your Simplicity could have moved it easily with a low trajectory on the chute deflector to keep it from going everywhere...no? Or did you just feel like getting a bit of physical activity? :-)

slinger wrote:
Fluffy stuff.  It's like blowing air and I do like to get a bit of physical exercise.  I often shovel until it becomes tiring then I pull out a suitable machine to do the rest of the job. 

I pulled out the old Craftsman SS machine a few days ago after seasonal storage.  Fired up and ran on the first pull.  However, after a bit, the engine revs started climbing without any input.  I'm thinking it might have an air leak at the carb manifold or crank seals.  Got it in the basement waiting for my attention.

 Will post results.

Opened up the Craftsman and noticed that the original engine mount that attaches it to the frame/handle side had broken completely through and the engine was being held by the makeshift bolster that I had fabricated a couple years ago.  It's fairly wobbly being held by one bolt on the side.   Not sure if that's what caused or contributed to the engine rpms rising?  Everything else seems alright.  Crank has no play in it, carb and exhaust both on tight.  Governor working as intended.  I'll be taking the engine out and bolting it to a plate that i can secure in a vice and fire it up to do some leakage tests.  We'll have to see how it goes from there.   

I took my Honda 928 out to clear the pond so my kids could skate. However the pond edges were too soft and it would have sunk if I went too far. Luckily I stopped before the debacle and backed away from the soft edges. Took my HS520 out and it did a nice job clearing out 4-5" of snow and polishing the ice. Sinking 520 is not a big deal but a sunken 928 would have been very bad. SS is a very nice tool and gets used 95% of the time after a snow fall.

borat wrote:
Borat, hope you can fix it without too much trobule. Based on yours & others experiences in this area, I double checked engine mounts while it was on the bench. In this machine the motor is suspended by 4 bolts through the side where the drive shaft comes out.


Seemed rigid enough, but I added a couple pieces of angle iron to connect the unused mounting bolt on the flywheel cover to a crossbar the passes underneath the engine (haven't painted anything yet & at the frequency it's snowing that may wait till spring)



I also borrowed your idea to add a throttle cable (string).



Drilled a hole through the governor spring bracket to act as a guide. The string goes from the governor lever, through the hole & straight up through a hole in the engine cover. From there it's tied to the handle bar for now. Working on adapting a bicycle brake lever to control it.

Boy, it really works a treat and increases the trowing distance when you up the rpm.

GtWtNorth:

Your engine mount set up is much sturdier than the Craftsman set up.  It's no wonder that the mount broke on mine.  It's no more than a flimsy "L" bracket bolted to the left side handle upright and the engine hanging off the other side.  No mount on the bottom that would normally be attached to a cross rod.  The Murray I have which is almost identical to the Craftsman has a bottom mount.  I can probably have the mount welded but I'm not too concerned about it due to having the Murray and the MTD.  The intention was to have one available for parts.  Looks like the Crapman was first to volunteer.  My main concern is to ensure the engine is good.  The other parts will be a bonus. 


All that's holding the engine is the gray steel bracket.  One bolt on the handle and two on the engine. 

Borat, Yikes, I see what you mean. Talk about planned obsolescence! Doesn't even look like there is any kind of crossbar to attach a bracket to the flywheel housing so even rewelding would just prolong the inevitable. Into the parts pile with her.

Cheers
Paul

I found a way to fix the motor mount.  I added a support from the wheel axle to a stud that was already protruding from the engine in position to accept a bolster for that purpose.  I also think I found the source of the engine's over-revving.  I noticed fuel being blown past the governor shaft.  I suspect the governor seal is shot.  I'll have to look into seeing what I can find to repair that.  

I might be able to salvage this thing after all.

GtWtNorth wrote:

Borat, Looking at the pic I would fix that bracket like so. Machine that crack looking from the top portion of it ,straight down to create a nice clean straight edge top to bottom. Then I would use a piece of angle iron the same length of the bracket plus overlap top and bottom. Weld one flat side to the bracket and the other portion of the angle gets screwed to the tubular as the original.

Thanks for the info.
Sounds like a good solid fix but I think what I've done today will keep the engine soundly in place.  It's far better now than it had been.  I have to get a seal for the governor rod before i put it back to work.  Not in a big hurry.  I've got enough machines to get me through the winter. 

I still have to address the governor shaft seal.  Got to get the part and hopefully change it without taking the engine apart.  It's an awful tight fit in there.  Not sure if I can prize the old one out.  From my experience with oil/crank/fork seals, it looks like it might be a tough go.   


The motor mount fix.  

These pictures looks like the bottom of my Toro Powerlite.  It also has a Tecumseh engine.  Doesn't Tecumseh provide enough/proper mounting points on these TH engine block so people do not have to resort to bracing on pull start cover?

aa335 wrote:
I think Tecumseh would have provided mounting brackets any where the customer wanted, so it's probably more a case of poor/cheap design of the motor mounting plate. Also, the long output shaft probably adds another source of twisting force on the motor mount when users ram  the machine into snow banks. So, with users who abuse their machines and don't do any maintenance (pulling furiously on the starter rope when it won't start right away) you have a recipe for  early failure.

I have to cast my vote against ss machines. I tried, I really tried to like my recently new to me Toro CCR 3000 SS thrower...but it's not in the cards. Nothing wrong with the machine...got it as a backup machine and it throws snow just fine. But it was too much of a hassel to use on my very slopped doublewide driveway. Because of the slope I had to blow going side to side and with a thin layer of base ice underneath the snow it was hard to keep it going in a straight line. The Suzuki engine was plenty powerful though and threw the moderately heavy snow effectively. Maybe if I had a flatter driveway...

I just wanted to add my $0.02 on single-stage machines.

I had a 3hp Ariens SS322 and a 5hp MTD. Both were nice in small storms of fluffy snow. But I had a lot of trouble with even quite moderate storms (maybe 4-6", especially if heavier snow). I'd end up no longer making any progress (some snow would land in the driveway, and need to be moved again), even taking narrow cuts. I sold both machines.

I've gone back to just a 2-stage (10 hp, 24") for my driveway. I don't have to try and fit a second machine in the limited space in my garage. With the differential on my Ariens, maneuvering it around is so much easier than with my fixed-axle MTD 2-stage (reducing the ease-of-use benefit of the single stage). And it does great even in deeper, heavy snow, including EOD.

However, I have an electric Toro Powercurve 1800 for my deck. I love it, it's actually my second one. At ~25 lbs, it's easy to carry up the stairs to my deck, which is about 10' off the ground. And it performs surprisingly well. Yesterday I cleared ~16" of fairly light snow, with a crust of ice in the middle. I took narrower cuts, and let it chew through, then did a second quick pass to get what went over the top of the bucket. Unlike 2-stroke engines, electric motors typically make more torque as they slow down (and there's no centrifugal clutch to slip), so it will keep churning along even when under a heavy load. The performance/weight is very impressive, vs my ~50-60 lb gas single-stages, and moving/storing it is easy.

I wouldn't want it as my driveway machine. But to be honest, having it as a backup to my 2-stage is still nice, if the big one had a problem. It may not sound like much, but it's still much faster than shoveling.

I recently put my 3 1/2 y.o. (SS) Toro 221QR on CL, & sold it today. First 3 yrs., I thought it was fine. This year, it became increasingly hard--or impossible to start. Then, sometimes, when it did start, it'd die after 5 or 10 min., & then again wouldn't start. (I do have a hinky R. wrist, & was kicking myself for not paying the extra $$ for elec. start.) Naturally, (in Mass.), this was the worst snow season in years. Considering the small size, when it ran, it'd do "sort-of-OK" with deep snow, I guess. I've also owned 2 Ariens 2-stage machines. I think--you get "more for your money" with them. Way better build quality. I also hate how Toro nickels & dimes you on the SS machines. "Quick-chute"? $100 extra. Elec. start? $100 extra on top of that. (Last I looked).