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Re: (ET) The Key to snowthrowing



Interesting and thanks for posting Larry. I slipped on wet mud monday and bashed my head so I got to miss getting the blower out for the snow. Fortunately we only had 6 inches or so of wet crud that was gone the next morning.
That's a weird problem, I've never had that. I will say that on 
setscrews for my leaf blower they usually had two screws in there: One 
went against the axle and was tightened down then another went on top of 
it to jam it against itself. Did you have two screws in there?
Possible it came loose, then the key fell out as the gear migrated away.

Chris


On 12/19/2020 1:34 PM, Larry Chace wrote:
Hi, All.  The recent big storm left us with 15" of powdery snow overnight, so I got out the I-5 with snowthrower and the E15 with plow. Although the snow was light, there was lots of it, and both machines were hard pressed to make much progress.  A lot of hand shovelling was necessary to clear one lane of the 700' driveway, which of course didn't contribute to the Domestic Tranquility.
The E15 blew the Controls fuse several times, probably because I was 
shifting between foreward and reverse too quickly.  Luckily, there is a 
supply of fuses on hand.
The I-5 worked well and even ate through the 4' high drift that the 
town's plow truck left behind at the end of the driveway.  Then, though, 
it made a different sound, one that I recall from a year ago (and 4 
years before that) -- the snowthrower motor shaft had become 
disconnected from the sprocket that drives the chain that drives the 
augar.  Inspection showed that the key was missing and the sproket had 
shifted about 1/2" away from the motor.  Grrrrrr....
When this happened years ago, I neglected to take note of what size the 
key is.  A GE microfische seems to describe it as 3/16" by 1" (a square 
key, not a semi-circular Woodruf key).  I do have a spare one of those 
and will try it, but I thought it would be wise to query the combined 
knowledge of you out there.  Also, do you recall the size of the 
setscrew(s) that should be holding the key in place?  Accessing the 
setscrew(s) is a Royal Pain...
Both machines work well when the snow is no more than, say, 6" to 8" 
deep, and it doesn't help that that the first 350' is uphill from the 
tractor garage toward the street.  Both tractors have chains and about 
150 pounds of ballast in their weight boxes.
Thanks in advance for any sage advise!

Larry Chace, Ithaca, NY

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