SteveinID

aa335 wrote:
Yeah, I keep telling the guys at work they owe me money for stopping the snowfall for them, but for some reason they're unwilling to fork over the dough. =-) Maybe I should threaten to return the blower and see what happens.

At this point, I want another major snowfall so I can judge this thing in its natural habitat. =-) Why is it that whenever you get a tool to handle a situation, the afore-mentioned situation doesn't happen anymore?

I called Ariens customer support today and talked to them about it, and they said that as long as the auger stops spinning when the lever is released, the small gap won't hurt anything.
I decided to really try to give the blower a workout today and see what it could do. Over the course of the last two weeks in December, we received probably four feet of snow at my house, and the plow has been piling it quite high on my lawn and in the street. My mom likes to park in one particular area, so I've been attempting (and failing) to keep it clear. The temps here have jumped the past 4 days to the high 30's/low 40's, with rain off and on. I figured that snow berm should be one of the more difficult tasks I could possibly throw at this thing...
It ate right through it.
Initially, I was using the tracks in the normal cleaning setting, but the stuff was so packed, it was starting to climb. I decided to give the "deep cutting" setting a shot. HOLY CRAP! It ate right down to the pavement and threw everything a bit further than I expected initially. (It's probably going to take a while for the ice line on the side of the house to melt.) I started out only cutting a swath about half the width of the intake (26"), but when I saw how well it was doing, I bumped it up to 3/4 of the intake and it still handled like a champ. I only ran the blower for 17 minutes including at least 5 goofing off with the differential and I still managed to clear enough room for the car and then some.
Long story short, I don't think it would be possible for me to be happier with my purchase right now.

Well, I picked up the blower today, it's the newer model 9526 DLET with the Tecumseh engine. Overall, I'm impressed. I ran it for 19 minutes grand total, 15 of which I was running the augers to run-in the attachment belt. Unfortunately, I didn't have any snow, and almost no slush to run it through, so it didn't get much of a workout. The belt finger clearance was pretty messed up, but I corrected that. I do have a question though: when you adjust the clutch idler and take in the slack from the clutch cable, it says the attachment idler arm should be touching the frame. How critical is this? Mine has about 1/16-1/8" clearance. I didn't know how to correct that, since the cable tension wasn't what was causing it. Any suggestions?

Ah Bill, I would have left this thread alone except to read it with interest until you included guns in the "not built to last" list. Some manufacturers still believe in building quality firearms. Ruger especially comes to mind...