Snowblowers. You can never have too much power or one too big

Yes both axles are Toyota pickup front axles

You can't just tease us with one pic that doesn't show anything.

Axles are mounted upside down

Back to the theme of this thread; can't have too much power or one too BIG. I was at a ski resort killing time and waiting for my kid to finish up practice. Parked out back in an empty part of the lot to let the dog out. Noticed this bad boy and snapped a pic. Though not uncommon the loader mounted blowers are a minority.


One added benefit for this type of configuration presented it self in a video I watched this morning. When faced with a wall of snow higher than the bucket height, one can move the blower up and chew at the snow bank in stages.

City has one of those. When it snows heavily, they usually use graders and any plow they can get to push everything to the middle of the streets and follow behind with the big ass blower into the back of a dump truck, then dump it all into the creek.

I POPPED MY CHERRY!

12 years of running a snowblower and I finally busted a shear bolt.

Thank you for your service Mr. Bolt. We'll pour one out for you later tonight.

(Thankfully the inventory manager at Askel's Blower Barn keeps some in inventory so I was back up and running in 15 minutes.)

Clearing snow to make dog paths this past weekend.

Went out skiing and got there late. Had to park in one of the overflow lots. This bad boy was out clearing the parking lot. Pushing hard, and you could hear the engine revving some high RPMs. 2 seconds later a loud bang, clank, and black smoke. Operator smoking a cigar exists the cab and pulls open the hatch near the tail pipe, and more black smoke bellows out. 2 days later we return to the lot and the blower is still parked in the same spot in the middle of the lot.

"It's the motor - we threw a rod."

Electrical problems caused a rod to go through the block.

Funny you should say that...Our town has a power station with 6 Fairbanks-Morse diesel powered generators. I should say "HAD".

On a very cold morning a few weeks ago the crew was getting the station ramped up to handle morning increased demand because of the cold. Something went very wrong with the generators in the plant and there were several explosions and subsequent fire. One of the workers was thrown from the building (former student of mine who has a lifetime habit of being directly involved in unfortunate events). No serious injuries, but we no longer have the cushion of being able to supplement power demand locally.

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Well it is that time of year again where we put away our beloved snow blowers. This was a low snow year, but still surprising that I did not bust ONE shear pin. The Honda auger pins are super easy to bust and are just grade 10.9 bolts. They do not have the standard metric grade marking but this one. They are the same bolts used all over the machine. I won't get into the controversy of if one should use regular 10.9 bolts. You can here if you'd like.
Honda replacement shear pin controversy | Page 4 | Snowblower Forum


I have noticed that the nut will back out over time. That or the bolt stretches some and even the nylock secured bolts get loose. I regularly tighten them. If not, the loose bolt will no longer be held in double shear, but will experience some bending before they yield. This results in a higher force necessary to shear the bolt, and the hole they go through will start to ovalize, getting worse and worse over time. One side of my machine is like this.

Anyways, I was in the back yard blowing the pile from the 2nd story deck. I back the machine off and find this. Kind of hard to see, but you can see the auger chew marks and just to the right a dog bone. One of those super hard solid as a rock bones, shear pin busting bones. I have missed it by an inches. I decided to not press my luck and parked the blower. Maybe for the season, but hopefully not. Till next winter...

It is a cool, rainy day here, so I decided to replace the paddles on my old Toro 2 stroke single stage snowblower today. Also sprayed all the metal parts with Rust Check rust inhibitor.

First time I ever did the job before it was cold. I'll thank myself in November!