cilynx

I live in Milwaukee and I use a 30+ year old Jacobsen Sno-Burst (single stage, paddle wheel type) to do my 2-car wide, 70-foot, heavily sloped driveway.  I'm a pretty big guy, but I've never had any trouble shoving it through the snow.  In fact, if I pick up on the handle a bit and let the paddle touch the ground, it pulls itself along pretty well.  I've happily shoved it through snowbanks taller than the machine itself.  The only time I ran into trouble was with the slush-storm we got a couple years back.  While trying to move the slush, the drive belt got wet, and that was pretty much the end of any useful power making it to the paddles.  If you're willing to put a little muscle behind them (which it sounds like you are since you don't like self-propelled), old Jacobsen and Toro single-stages work much better than you would expect and are readily available around here for cheap.

Friiy,

Thanks for the info.  I figured that since Jacobsen acknowledged that they didn't make their later engines that their claim that they made the J-501 was legitimate.  C'est la vie.

-cil

Friiy, do you have any references to back that up?  The owner's manual (linked above) states very clearly that the engine is a "Jacobsen J-501 ST (2 cycle)".  A quick Google search doesn't give me any reason to think that the J-501 was actually made by Tecumseh.

Thanks to a kind passer-by, I now have a PDF of the original manual including exploded parts diagrams available along with my carb walkthrough:

Jacobsen Sno-Burst Owner's Manual

Thanks for the kudos. I didn't know that they did their own engines either. One thing I did glean from the Tecumseh manual was the workings of the idle/load circuits. I've got 90% of an photo-tutorial on rip start repair done as well. I don't suppose anyone knows where I can get the pawls for the rip clutch, or even what they look like such that I could fabricate my own? Mine went *poing* one rip and were never seen / heard from again. I'm currently starting it by wrapping a piece of cord around the output shaft by hand. That's why the carb job giving me a one-rip start was so important =)