Almost record time for repairing the snowblower-

And I really needed it last night as the city street crews had pile 14” of the heavy stuff at the entrance to my driveway yesterday while I was at work. Unfortunately, I did not get the machine completely repaired and so I had to do the snow removal the hard and back-aching way with a shovel. I did nearly get the powered machine put together last night though. The biggest part of the repair was re-attaching the broken off from the auger portion bracket that holds the auger section to the drive section. The bracket is just a piece of fancy angle iron but the welds had failed and allowed the auger section to bounce around.

I spent more than an hour just cleaning up and trying to get either of the welding helmets I own working. Once I had a functioning faceshield, I couldn’t get my welder to cooperate, it might have been operator error but no matter, I could not get a weld bead to appear where I was futilely making sparks. So I drilled holes and bolted the bracket into its rightful place. I also added a bolt to the other bracket that had 1 broken weld before it failed completely. I installed the new cable that arrived yesterday- thanks Sears Parts Direct! I only ordered that part Sunday evening and it arrived yesterday, that’s good service.

I was just about to tape the drive belt to the pulley so I could rejoin the two halves of the machine when I discovered that the belt- which was brand new last winter, was cracked between the teeth all the way around the inner circumference. I don’t know why the belt was so badly damaged but I decided my repair work was done for the evening and to buy a new belt today before bolting everything back together. Rats! I guess I’ll hit the NAPA store today on the way home and maybe then I convert all the pieces back into a functioning machine.

I did get the driveway cleared out, manually, finally. Neighbor Leonard’s truck won’t be moving until the snow melts because I’m stacking snow in front of it and the pile is already bumper deep! It was 10 PM before I finally made it into the house and got to sit down.