Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire School Me on Snowblowers

I am 65 and spent several hours between 2 different machines today. An Hs520 Honda for sidewalks and tight spots and an Ariens 24 in 208cc for the wide open spots.
My ears will be ringing tonight.
whelennut

I just bought a Troy Bilt Storm 357. My driveway is about. 300 yards long and most of it’s gravel.. The skid bars aren’t tall enough to keep it from throwing a lot of gravel. Anyone have ideas for that? Someone suggested replacing them with wheels and I’m thinking of that. Any other ideas?

I would think the wheels would just dig into the gravel. I bought the Armor heavy duty skid shoes. I think they are the longest and widest available. They ride on top of the gravel pretty well.

Thank You JOG, I don't know how to do the link thing.

I'm glad that I live where a snow blower is a gay Eskimo!
Jerry

aalf, a plow looks attractive early in the season and snow plowing has justified a lot of play thing ATV's for wives. To date we have had 39% of our yearly total average snow fall and official winter hasn't even started yet. I learned my lesson real early with a plow on my Blazer and a 300' driveway at the cabin. You need to weigh more than you are pushing and need to push the snow back far enough so that you can put even more snow next to it in all the succeeding snowfalls. I hit the bank of snow with that Blazer and the truck moved sideways, but the bank didn't. I watch the locals horsing around with their ATV plows and a blower would have been faster and cleaner. Even the yard service guy with the 3/4 ton truck and plow took longer to do the driveway across the street than it would have taken with a good blower. I put our snow 50' out into the yard and no plow will do that and would likely scalp and rut the lawn in the process.

Where I live, the front of the my house, which faces east, is on the north/south road, and these blocks are short, only 2 houses on the block, (6-8 houses E&W) so both of us have corner lots. So the houses across the street are also on corner lots, but their houses face north & south on the adjoining streets, meaning nobody's house faces mine.

Luckily, the plow driver swings over and wings everything across the street, and never plows me in. If I beat him out there in the mornings, I plow out into the street over to or towards the neighbor's back yard, and he wings it the rest of the way. If he gets an earlier start, I just push it all the full 50' of drive south, then as far into the yard as I want. I only actually need the first half or so of the driveway during the winter, the rest can be fudge room if need be.

Meaning, I never fret over running out of room to put it. If things get tight, I have a couple of friends with plows, one with an endloader.......

How's your scraper bar set? Most if not all such units have an adjustable scraper bar on the bottom of the unit. Mine is set almost to the ground because I go over concrete, mostly. If I was on gravel, I'd set mine up off the ground an inch or so.

Scraper bar is set all the way down but the span of adjustment is of only about 2”. Will be looking into that armor skid bar, thanks JOG.

My Ariens 2 stag has been flawless for 15+ years. Has electric start, 6 forward speeds, 2 reverse and a Tecumseh 7.5 horse Snow King engine. I would by another in heart beat.

you guys have got me inspired to do some basic mtc on my snowblower now. better order my parts now....