Wednesday, November 6, 2013

The Ariens snowblower

My Friend Dick gave me an old Arins snow blower 3 years ago, and i have  kept it running with duck tape over the years. I was going to replace it with another Craftsman that has a blown engine but i am having a hard time locating a block ,so the Ariens gets a face lift.
First I dumped the old stubby wheels, they were not good in the heavy snow and mounted some large balloon tires that I had laying around. The drive shaft bushings were all worn out and they were replaced with oilier barrings. The shaft was too short for the new tires so we modified the shaft by welding an extension  shaft on and pinning the two together. (see video). The old engine came off . Its an old point system and it just would not start in the winter anymore,it was small and under powered.




I acquired a beefy Briggs and Straton off an old rototiller, this thing is big,and mounted it on the power section of the blower.
The blower is cool it separates with just 2 bolts and i can take the entire drive train off the blower section.
So it got separated and while there i cleaned up the power takeoff clutch,
The first problem is that the mounting holes did not match the old engine. So they were cut off and new holes where drilled to accommodate the new position. They had to be marked accurately, drilled ,tapped with 5/16 24 and back bolted because the tapped holes were probably not strong enough for the larger engine. Eight hours later ,lots of machine work and the engine is in.
She got a new throttle cable ,new springs and belt ,everything got tighten up and when i pulled the cord she ran, nice.
Lots of torque and power now.

The only problem i have now is that i cant rotate the dump shoot, i have to do it by hand for now. This is because the bracket that holds the gear  assembly in position for the shoot had to be removed because it now interfered with the new larger engine housing. I'm not too concerned , will figure something out later .'
For now it works and I have a souped up snow blower on steroids.