Thought I'd post this in the
thread to kinda resurrect it.
had a bridal shower to go to this afternoon so it was a good opportunity to crank up the garage heater and do work, son.
I mentioned the other day that the auger on my 2 stage snowblower stopped working. Whelp, I took the thing apart today and, as expected, the belt was the culprit. When I took the belt cover off I found this.
You can see the belt jumped off the auger pully below.
Upon closer inspection, I saw obvious damage to the belt and also found chewed up belt bits inside.
At this point I should say that I was using the excellent owners
that came with this Craftsman machine when I bought it 17 years ago. It's got clear, illustrated, detailed maintenance instructions on how to change oil and plug, adjust or change belts, chains, drive disk, etc, It really is a manual written for a DIY'er. Good old Sears at it's best.
Anyway, since the auger belt was fucked, I thought about the drive belt. Per the manual, the auger belt needs to be removed to change the drive belt and since they're the same age, and while I was in there, I figured it was best to just change both belts. So I took the manual and the old belts to my local Ace Hardware but they only had the auger belt.
I had them check my next closest Ace and was told they had a drive belt in my size there so off I went to buy the other belt. Finally made my way home with both belts and went back to work.
To get the drive belt off the drive pulley, the whole snow blower has to be cracked in half. You can see more belt debris on the ground.
Old drive belt, with the auger pulley at lower left.
And both new belts installed.
A quick tensioner adjustment to the auger belt( the drive belt doesn't have a tensioner to adjust as it's always under tension), and donezo. Just had to put the 2 halves of the machine back together and fire it up to test everything before reinstalling the bottom cover plate and top belt cover. Minus the trips to both hardware stores, it took me about 3 hours. I could probably do it again in 2 or 2.5 hours, per usual.
Gotta say, I rarely get a chance to wrench like this any more, it was fun. Especially since it had a successful outcome.
Bring on the next snow fall.