Dan Dubeau
Ultra Member
We, like most got a pretty good dumping of snow last night. My little old 24" craftsman blower made it through the morning driveway fluff ok, but when I took a break for lunch, and went back out to help the neighbor do the side road the sun had changed the snow from some nice medium fluff, to heavy wet stuff.
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I tried to make one pass down the side road (about 250') that took 40 minutes, and then this happened on the way back. I hit a root at the bottom of my driveway, and it broke in half. One of the impeller housing brackets broke off and the other was hanging on my a thread.
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I picked this blower up cheap after the first snowfall because my Jeep broke. See a trend here..... It was old and had issues (Friction disc tensioner that I already fixed), but I got it cheap and figured I could squeeze another winter out of it, and give it a good going over in the spring....Almost made it too... Even my wife got a good chuckle out of this one. That's ok because I have a shop and can fix stuff right?
The old mounting brackets had cracked off, and looking at them it's been a while in the making. I cut them out, and all the cracked/rusted areas around them, then did some Irish CAD for filler pieces.
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If there is anything more Canadian that a guy fixing a snowblower in march wearing shorts, using a beer case for template material, I'd like to know.
I found a 1/8" off cut that fit the bill and some quick portaband action later, I had my patch panels.
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Next, I needed to round the edge over to match the impeller housing so I did some incremental hammer bending in the vise. Probably would have been easier to work hot, but I didn't have a way to heat it up handy and close by...
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Came out not too bad, and was mildly therapeutic.....
Then it was time to wheel the welder over to the door and weld them in.
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Not my best work, but it'll hold. It's a beater snowblower, not a concourse car restoration....Blew through in a few spots and had to build it back up. Pretty thin sheetmetal on the housing, so I just went with the full pen tack method and jumped around keeping the puddle on the patch and letting it wet out into the hosing, as everytime I tried to run a stringer it blew through. Meatball surgery. Was under a bit of a time crunch on this one as I had a Dad/Daughter AYCE Sushi date at 5:00 I wasn't going to miss, so the whole repair up to that point only took about 30-40 minutes including the pics to bring you guys along. Was planning on welding in the brackets and buttoning it back up when I got home under the lights, but too much Sashimi, and about 1.5km running the neighbors tracked honda blower doing the side road after doing mine made me put it off until tomorrow in the daylight. A lot of snow was moved today.
So I'm left here, not sure If I'll reuse the old brackets, or make new. There's almost as much work in grinding off the old welds and cleaning them up to weld as it would be to make new. That'll be morning Dan's problem. But I'm leaning towards new from the same 1/8" sheet.
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This was the first time I really got to take advantage of all the work I've put into the shop over the past few months/year, and it was an absolute joy to be able to jump from task to task without a big production to move everything all the time. Even though my welding bench is full of the current in process project...... I used to dread repairs like this, and they'd get put off forever because of it. I wish I had a more space in the shop to bring it inside though because the apple tree that hangs over the driveway dropped a big snowball down my neck as I was welding, that was a nice unexpected surprise. I've had hot bb's fall down my neck before, but never a snowball lol.
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I hate that tree....
I'll be back in the morning to post up the finished repair. If there's any interest in these low brow WIP posts I'll keep posting them up. I have a few more waiting for the snowmelt. I usually don't even take pics, but having a nice organized shop to work in now free'd up a lot of time from continually moving stuff around lol. I run into a lot of stuff like this being cheap and buying old junk because I can fix it.
I tried to make one pass down the side road (about 250') that took 40 minutes, and then this happened on the way back. I hit a root at the bottom of my driveway, and it broke in half. One of the impeller housing brackets broke off and the other was hanging on my a thread.
I picked this blower up cheap after the first snowfall because my Jeep broke. See a trend here..... It was old and had issues (Friction disc tensioner that I already fixed), but I got it cheap and figured I could squeeze another winter out of it, and give it a good going over in the spring....Almost made it too... Even my wife got a good chuckle out of this one. That's ok because I have a shop and can fix stuff right?
The old mounting brackets had cracked off, and looking at them it's been a while in the making. I cut them out, and all the cracked/rusted areas around them, then did some Irish CAD for filler pieces.
If there is anything more Canadian that a guy fixing a snowblower in march wearing shorts, using a beer case for template material, I'd like to know.
I found a 1/8" off cut that fit the bill and some quick portaband action later, I had my patch panels.
Next, I needed to round the edge over to match the impeller housing so I did some incremental hammer bending in the vise. Probably would have been easier to work hot, but I didn't have a way to heat it up handy and close by...
Came out not too bad, and was mildly therapeutic.....
Then it was time to wheel the welder over to the door and weld them in.
Not my best work, but it'll hold. It's a beater snowblower, not a concourse car restoration....Blew through in a few spots and had to build it back up. Pretty thin sheetmetal on the housing, so I just went with the full pen tack method and jumped around keeping the puddle on the patch and letting it wet out into the hosing, as everytime I tried to run a stringer it blew through. Meatball surgery. Was under a bit of a time crunch on this one as I had a Dad/Daughter AYCE Sushi date at 5:00 I wasn't going to miss, so the whole repair up to that point only took about 30-40 minutes including the pics to bring you guys along. Was planning on welding in the brackets and buttoning it back up when I got home under the lights, but too much Sashimi, and about 1.5km running the neighbors tracked honda blower doing the side road after doing mine made me put it off until tomorrow in the daylight. A lot of snow was moved today.
So I'm left here, not sure If I'll reuse the old brackets, or make new. There's almost as much work in grinding off the old welds and cleaning them up to weld as it would be to make new. That'll be morning Dan's problem. But I'm leaning towards new from the same 1/8" sheet.
This was the first time I really got to take advantage of all the work I've put into the shop over the past few months/year, and it was an absolute joy to be able to jump from task to task without a big production to move everything all the time. Even though my welding bench is full of the current in process project...... I used to dread repairs like this, and they'd get put off forever because of it. I wish I had a more space in the shop to bring it inside though because the apple tree that hangs over the driveway dropped a big snowball down my neck as I was welding, that was a nice unexpected surprise. I've had hot bb's fall down my neck before, but never a snowball lol.
I hate that tree....
I'll be back in the morning to post up the finished repair. If there's any interest in these low brow WIP posts I'll keep posting them up. I have a few more waiting for the snowmelt. I usually don't even take pics, but having a nice organized shop to work in now free'd up a lot of time from continually moving stuff around lol. I run into a lot of stuff like this being cheap and buying old junk because I can fix it.
