another snow blower post

Well I did it.   I retired my 24 year old snow blower and bought a new Toro 24" 212cc engine.

Too many things on the old one on shaky ground.   When the carburetor broke was the last straw.   I even bought a new carb for it.  I gave up.    It has served me well.

Interesting.   The new one was $100 more than what I paid 24 years ago.

I guess the coming snow storm with out a snow blower tripped the trigger.

I just turned 72.  I have a guy who plows my driveway, but for the last 20 years I've been shoveling my deck, which is around 1000 square feet.  At 9000 feet, that holds a lot of snow, and my location averages about 155 inches per year, so this year I bought a Snow Joe electric blower for Home Depot.  It's 21" wide, weighs only 35 pounds, and works really well for my purpose.  With this dismally dry winter here in SW Colorado I've only had to use it 3 times so far, but boy, does it save wear and tear on the old back.  Yesterday it cleared 8 inches of heavy, wet snow.  I'm surprised at how well it works, it's not going to do my 130-foot driveway, you have to be patient with heavy snow, and it's not going to be happy with a big storm that drops a couple of feet, but it works really well for most of my situations, and it only cost $200.  Happy camper.

Plus, now I can get my rock and roll band to play "Got My Snow Joe Working".

I just bought a Snow Joe myself. I like it on the battery it's quieter than a hair dryer, on the cord it's about as loud as a shop-vac. 

One less engine to maintain. That's a good thing. 

I looked at the Snow Joe, didn't feel it was suited for my conditions.   They are cheap.

Pushing it up the hill didn't seem to work for me.

Just combined a 9hp Chassie of my sears snowblower with a 12 hp motor off a old Noma blower I got for free that had a broken drive. I think the old 9hp  motor was a bit more tired than a realized. The supposed three extra hp seemed like a 200 percent increase in power.  I can toss heavy wet snow close to 40 feet.  It really helps that the big motor came off a 36 inch wide unit and it is now on a 29 inch wide unit.  All blowers should be made like this. 

I feel like I just did the equivalent of an LS swap in to a Miata with my snowblower. 

Now that my old machine is 25 yrs. old, is it classed as an antique ?

Got to use the new blower today in lite snow.

It really throws.

One problem I had was the drive levers.  All of the years the traction drive lever was on the right, now it is on the left.  It will take a couple of snow falls to reprogram my brain.

There is one thing I will never understand is the "gearing".  1st. should be slower and you would have to run to keep up in 6th. Nothing has changed in 25 yrs.    Reverse 1 is almost impossible to get to work, no change there either.   

I do like the  "Quick Stick"

I've got 2 Ariens.  A 24" for home and a 28" for the office.  Just used the one at home for the first time this season.  Love em, electric start makes life easy.

Broke a UJ on the PTO shaft for my tractor mount snowblower. I used the back blade on the tractor then had to use our 8hp 26” snowblower to clean up the edges of our driveways. Today I learned that a snowblower gets about 0.8 mpg when working moderately hard. As should be expected it ran out of gas as far from a jerrycan as possible.