With Snow in the Forecast....

stuckinthemuck & Canadian border VT ... is this your machine? My biggest concern is steering. It looks as tho the guy in this vid is just touching the brake? on the side he wants to turn, as stuck said. Does it disengage the hydrostatic drive on that side too? Assuming it would have to but... you guys have time with these.

 

Ayup Stinny thats it. As it mentions in the video pulling the handle disengages the clutch for the drive on the selected track. Takes a bit of practice to coordinate the movement of your hands to the right controls but once you get that figured out, it's pretty easy to use. And the throwing distance is no joke...

 

Looks like you might be able to get one...

Contact Us - B.E.A.R. Fabrication

 

Older model, and they have addressed at least three of my biggest complaints with the newer one like you have:
1) They raised the handles.... a lot! I am 6'2" and when the machine is in the 'up' auger position (tipped so the scraper is raised but that lowers the handles) it is a back- breaker to deal with.
2) They unlocked and clutched the tracks so the machine will either turn itself or greatly help you turn it. Mine will beat the user to death trying to spin it 180 for each pass so I end up blowing in one direction and just backing up all the way and then taking another bite of snow; inefficient but as I said, this thing is real tough to turn.
3) They changed the pivot system making it much, much better. Yours is controlled by a lever up top while mine is controlled by a foot pedal at the back of the machine. Mine has three positions: too high, a little too low, and way too low while yours has infinite positioning. A much, much better system.

Of course to upgrade my machine would mean basically throwing most of it away and buying all new parts to build the bottom end of a snowblower. Not worth it.

Shear pins: yeah, on a Honda they are nuts and bolts, which I buy by the 100 (seriously). I have gone through a dozen in one snow drop. And there is another shear pin, also a bolt and nut, on the impeller itself; it is a double- diameter, stepped affair that you are not going to find anywhere but Honda. What is worse is that when that one shears, the impeller moves fore / aft on the output shaft making it (Easy Boys!) to find both holes, get them in the correct direction (small diameter up) and then drive the old one out and put the new one in. Tough to do at night, in the snow, kneeling down and working through the augers and into the impeller, and once it IS in place, it takes two tools to tighten it. One of those things that looks really, really slick in the 3D modeling software while it is designed, and really slick on the nice warm, dry sales floor. In the real world of snow, not so great.

Oh yeah, one more thing: Honda fits the augers really well (read: very close clearances) to the axle stubs. Unlike most snow blowers, they only use an auger stub about 3" long on each side. When (not if) that rusts, sometimes they can be removed with an acetylene torch, sometimes not. So sometime in the summer, it is worth popping the augers off and very well coating both axle stubs with as much anti- seize as you can get in there.

Brian

 

I also have older style 2005 i believe.. it three area I dislike BDF covered above.. for me steering was not that big of an issue.. unless snow way deep .. I came from 1978 Toro that was a couple hundred pounds so Honda was much better! my problem with all Japanese stuff trucks tools etc.. is they are not designed for over 6 foot 225 pound guys! they are meant for 5foot 8 and 175 max... JMO ..

still have mine it gets used a lot less because avatar is faster.. but it still starts and runs first pull and blows crazy amount of snow and it' 12 years old at least.. and gets used more than most.. 1/4 mile gravel drive and at leest 8 car parking in front of garage and turn around etcetc

 

That all makes sense. When I started looking at them, there did seem to be a few shortfalls that were not easy to uncover in the showroom. I waited to pull the trigger and lucked out with the newer model. I believe all of the shearpins are now one type on the new model so that's a bit easier to deal with too.

 

Yeah, and to be fair, there are upsides: they do blow snow into the stratosphere. I installed 'wipers' on my impeller blades and it does not make much difference on dry snow but now it will blow slush even further now. The hydrostatic drive is nice once you get used to it too, just hold the clutch lever in all the time and control the machine's speed and direction with the hydro- lever. Much nicer than the disc and wheel driven machines.

I was eye-ballin' the new style 928 and they are nice, in addition to the features / changes already mentioned, they have a completely electric, joystick controlled discharge chute which I think is great. Just my opinion but there really is no need for an electric start on these machines; they are the easiest starting small engines I have ever seen. In addition to being very easy to turn over, they can be pulled so slowly that Mary Jane Tinklepants could do it and they still light up; I run mine out of fuel and leave it for the season, which is around 8 to 10 months: open the fuel valve, open the throttle and choke it, one pull and it is running smoothly. Absolutely beautiful small engines in every way (other than draining the oil, which runs over the engine frame on its way to running over the track on its way to dribbling onto the ground :-( An aluminum foil 'chute' takes care of that though.

Brian

 

I'm sold on it guys... thanks. Any chance I could get you to chip in on payments for me... ...

 

So they fixed that too... the extension lets you jam a funnel underneath and with the plug at the end, less than a drop of oil went down the side of the frame. I maneuvered the left track on top of a 1x4 board I had to ensure a complete drain. This small roll probably helped the oil not flow backward on the funnel and down the side of the machine.