Saturday, December 01, 2007

First Snow

Here's me, oh so pretty after the first shoveling of the snow today. Who needs one of those fancy spiky haircuts so it looks like I'm not balding - I can achieve the same thing just standing around outside. I think I look a little like my nephew Artie in this pic.

We were going to use the snowblower to get rid of the snow this year. We got rid of the huge one that doesn't fit in any of the cars, so I can't ever get it repaired, and were going to buy a new one, but my father in law upgraded and gave us his used one. It seems to have some issues. I nearly wore my arm off getting it to start (which makes it a non-entity for the purposes of Pooteewheet getting it started), and once it did start it was stop and go a dozen times. But the real issue was that most of the time it only threw snow about 12". That's fine on the edges of the driveway, but if I have to move snow outward 12" at a time from the center, it will literally take me hours to finish the driveway. I'm not sure if I need to take it in, or worry about a new machine again that has an electric start for my wife. Here's the use snowblower, with it's erectile dysfunction. Note that it doesn't matter how slow I go, or how small the slice of snow I blew, the usual behavior was what you see when it's sort of dribbling snow. A few times it was worse, looking sort of like a bubbling fountain, and for a few seconds (in this video), it seems to work like a snowblower should.

3 comments:

boringsahm said...

My boys came running out of the play room to watch you blow snow and Pooteewheet laughter is wonderfully contagious or maybe it was just the fountain blower!

Looks so cold!

Scooter said...

My father in law managed to get it to stay in the high throttle position, so I'm going to give it a few more tries before I give up on it.

It's only 9 (F) below today. It's not that bad. You just have to take your coffee/tea to the car with you for extra warmth and hope your windows don't fog up.

Anonymous said...

If there is a throttle lever on the blower, you might be able to minimize the stalling problem by tightening the bolt, screw, etc that holds the lever onto the blower. If the lever is tighter, it might keep the engine speed from slipping down (and maybe stalling it), since the engine vibration won't cause the throttle to drop.

I'm not entirely sure this is even the root of your snow blower problem, but I know a loose throttle lever was the source of trouble on my riding mower. It might be worth checking....