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The Snowblower Wars, Round Three
This isn’t really about snowblowers. It’s about my well-documented propensity for shooting myself in the foot and not learning lessons until I’ve been taught them three times.
Living in the tightly-packed suburbs on 6600 square feet of property, I don’t have a big driveway, so I’ve never needed big snow-moving equipment to clear it in winter. For years I had a Honda HS520 single-stage snowblower. It was an odd-looking little thing that resembled a tortoise with a snorkel on its shell. It was useless if the snow was deeper than ten inches or wet and heavy, and there were limits to how well it could drag itself forward on its rubber snow-throwing paddles, but its 20-inch width was great for blowing out between the cars, and if I needed to bring it over to my mother’s house, my wife and I could lift it into the back of the station wagon.
Initially it was Honda-reliable, which is what you want from a snowblower because pulling them apart curbside in winter really sucks. And like their vaunted lawnmowers, it usually started on one easy pull. But over time, its performance dropped. One issue was that if you pushed it beyond its limits and tried to keep hammering it into deep powdery snow, it would die and wouldn’t restart. I found that the baffle plate over the carb intake would clog up and starve the thing for air, though why this problem seemed to worsen over time was unknown.
But the other issue was my completely self-inflicted wound of not wanting to pay the equivalent of $28/gallon of something like TruFuel ethanol-free long-shelf-life gas specifically made for outdoor power equipment. (Note that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no ethanol-free pump gas available in Massachusetts. The locations that pure-gas.org shows are all either yard equipment stores selling little cans of TruFuel, or race shops selling big expensive cans of Sunoco race fuels, or airports or marinas where you can’t simply drive up in a car and fill a gas tank or a portable container.) Nor did I use fuel stabilizer. My rationale was that I routinely let over-winter storage of my cars creep from three months to more than six, and never once saw an issue with starting or running that I traced to old gas. Now, I’m not an idiot, at least not here—I’ve certainly experienced the gummy horror that can come from cars sitting for years. But for one winter to the next, I just wasn’t seeing it.
Not surprisingly, I was wrong, and old gas caught up with the Honda. In my defense, I think that one winter it didn’t snow enough to use it, so by the time I fired it up, the gas was closer to two years old. By the time its carburetor had gummed up and I pulled it and cleaned it and got one more season out of it, I was ready to move on.
I bought a vintage MTD (Yard Machines) 24-inch snowblower from a retired guy who had a hobby-business of resurrecting snowblowers and lawn tractors and reselling them. He had a lot of energy behind the whole “They don’t build them like this anymore” thing that resonated with me. I paid more for it than I should have, but I liked him, his little retirement-passion operation, and the idea that this blunderbuss of a snowblower would run forever. And the electric start was great for my aging back.
Unfortunately, it was not my smartest purchase. Like the little Honda, the MTD would die when I used it to clear deep snow and simply refuse to restart, though if its fresh-air intake was packing with snow as the Honda’s was, I never caught it in the act. The seller said that I was working it too hard, and that friction from ice on the impellers was dragging on the engine and causing it to die, but I never saw any direct evidence of that. Several times I needed to either work on it outside in the cold or drag it into the garage and thread it past the vintage cars to work on it, the ultimate thumb-in-the-eye for something that you need to do its job.
Then, in preparation for winter a few years ago, when I pulled the MTD out from under the back porch and tried to fire it up, it wouldn’t start. I found that I’d mistakenly left it full of gas even though I swore I’d drained it. D’oh! I goosed it with starting fluid and it started, then died, the sure sign of a fuel delivery problem. I pulled the carb off, took it apart, blew out the jets and passages, but it made no difference. I mentioned it on Facebook, and a few folks chimed in that Chinese-made carburetors for Tecumseh engines are unbelievably inexpensive on Amazon—like fifteen bucks shipped—and are a quick solution to this problem. So I bought one branded “HOOAI” (like a soldier might say if he was talking about himself) and installed it. Problem solved.
Until last week. A decent-sized snowfall was predicted for Saturday night. I again rolled the MTD out from under the deck and again kicked myself when I found it half-full of fuel from last winter. I ran out and got a few gallons of fresh gas, topped off the tank, again connected the extension cord, again was surprised and disappointed when the electric start did nothing, again goosed it with starting fluid, but this time was thrilled when it stayed running. Okay, I thought—dodged a bullet this year. I put it in gear, self-propelled it up the hill from the back of the house, and staged it at the end of the sidewalk.
That evening, I had a gig in Providence, Rhode Island. I was concerned enough about the snow that I drove the Armada with its awful 13mpg fuel economy. The gig was in a coffeehouse up the hill from the Providence River in an area reminiscent of Beacon Hill in Boston. The narrow little roads leading there were steep enough that I imagined I’d need the four-wheel drive to get out of the curbside parking spot when the gig was over. But to my surprise, I came outside to find no snow. It wasn’t until I got off I-95 that the first flurries reflected in the Armada’s headlights, and by the time I pulled into my driveway, everything was full-on white. I couldn’t have timed it better had I tried.
The next morning, I was greeted with six inches of fluffy powder. Sleet was predicted for later in the day, so I wanted to deal with it before it turned to cement. Right then. I was prepared for this. I fired up the MTD, let it settle into an idle, took one pass of the sidewalk… and it died. It would restart with starting fluid but would only run for a few seconds.
Fuel delivery. Again. Likely clogged carburetor. Again. WHY CAN’T I LEARN THIS LESSON?
My wired-in Hack Mechanic reaction was to grab a few tools and begin pulling the carburetor off, or at least drain the gas out of the float bowl, but it was overridden by my brain telling me “You are getting too old to troubleshoot another snowblower curbside and have fuel soak through your gloves in 20-degree weather. Just shovel the damn driveway and be done with it.” I dragged the dead snowblower back to the end of the sidewalk and grabbed the shovel. Normally my oldest son (who lives with us) does that, but he’d just badly sprained his wrist slipping on ice while walking the dog, so it was just me. The snow was light and fluffy enough that I got things shoveled out without reinjuring my fragile back.
But as I finished, the sun came out and temperatures suddenly became quite comfortable. I looked at the dead MTD snowblower, sighed, and thought “Yeah, okay, what the hell, once more unto the breach.” I grabbed a few tools, pulled off the box covering the carburetor, and dropped the float bowl.
The whole thing was corroded, likely a combination of cheap metal and water that was attracted by the 10 percent ethanol fuel.
I unbent a paperclip and stuffed it up the port on the underside of the carburetor that went up to the needle valve, put the carburetor back together, and tried again, but it didn’t cooperate. Nope, done.
I went back inside the house, searched through my old Amazon orders for “carburetor,” and found the link to the HOOAI carb I’d bought two years ago. The price had increased to $19.
Click.
I went back outside, and in about 10 minutes had the two 11mm nuts securing the carburetor removed. I covered up the intake with aluminum foil to keep it safe from the elements. The replacement carb arrived the next day. I got it installed just as quickly, turned the petcock to let fuel flow in, and the MTD fired up on the first pull.
On the one hand, spending $19 every two years on a disposable replacement carburetor and taking maybe 20 minutes from start to finish installing it is a low price to pay for my own foolishness. On the other hand, $28 for a gallon of TruFuel is starting to look like smarter and smarter money spent. As soon as I run the tank dry, I’m in. I’ve probably got half a gallon of fresh fuel in it. Hey, a buck fifty doesn’t grow on trees, you know.
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Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic™: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.
I’m lucky enough to have a station down the street from me that sells ethanol-free 91 octane.
It’s all I run in my commercial Ariens blower, as the guy at the shop stressed ethanol will be the death of it.
It’s now 5 years old and has never given me an issue. I do make sure to run it dry every spring and complete a full service of the unit, oil and all.
Is it worth taking a road trip with a 5 gallon can every fall and sourcing some ethanol-free stuff?
It’d be a good excuse to get a last good run in any of the vintages, then you could dump what you don’t use into a car in the spring.
I to live in a state that has both non and 10% ethanol at the pump. At 60 cents difference the car get ethanol and everything else gets non ethanol. I always run the carb dry after every use and use Stabil in my over winter gas. If l live in a ethanol only state l would buy the canned fuel and run the carb dry after every run. AND there is a new player in town called HIPA that The Chickanic on YouTube used their parts (carb, etc.) and was very satisfied.
I just started using ethanol free as we just had a station near by that sells it for about a dollar more.
Before that I used it up fast as I get a lot of snow and my weed eaters and my blowers all take the same oil mixture.
I also never store them with fuel in them.
As for snow blowers. I have had two Toro single stage since 1976. My dad bought the first one and I said it would not work. Well it has done up to 30″” of snow.
My second one is still going and like the the first it will tackle any snow here in the Ohio Snow belt of Lake Erie.
Never had a want or need for one of the big machines. My neighbor has one of the big ones. I can clear mine and help him finish his as he moves so slow.
Note I also put some Stable in the two cycle oil when I didnt use Ethenol free.
Bought my Toro S-200 single stage in 1979 on a Sunday after an overnight blizzard (big snow year, best money I ever spent) at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, IL. The snowblower department of JC Penney was the only store open and they were handing out tickets. I was #59. Still runs, but replaced in use by the last year of the 2-stroke Toro single stage around 2010. Never used anything other that ethanol fuels but I do rotate them out if I have excess. No issues, other than one primer bulb melting on a 1980’s leaf blower that I finally disposed of this year, not because of carb issues, but because the coil burned out. Always stored OPE dry in the off-season with some oil in the cylinder like my dad did. Things last when you take care of them. Who knew?
What do you do with the fuel you drain from your snowblower and tools? Assuming the fuel would continue to degrade even while in the jerry can. So do you cycle the fuel from the snowblower into the leaf blowers and lawnmowers, and vice versa? Dump into a car?
I left fuel in my vintage MTD last summer. Had to pull the carbs apart and clean them out. Started up right away and I’ve had a reliable winter. But I will run dry and drain the tank for sure this spring. But my only gas powered summer tool is my chain saw – everything else is electric or battery. So do I dump it in my daily driver?
I’ve not figured out why some areas (states?) have non-ethanol available and others don’t. As a guy with quite a few small-engine equipment around (albeit NOT any snowblowers!), I’m glad that my state has quite a few places where non-ethanol fuel is readily available – and seemingly more coming around to it all the time.
But regardless of the higher cost of buying it in small batches, I would recommend doing so, Rob. Eventually it isn’t going to just be a cheap Chinesium carb replacement. It’ll be a gas tank, too. Possibly even more damage will be done. Plus you’ll save yourself a LOT of wrench time (in cold conditions) by having more reliable starting and running machines. As we age – and I’m a lot older than you, so listen up – that “first pull” experience becomes more and more important!
The States that had the worst problems with air pollution have regulations requiring ethanol in the gas. States that are upwind tend not to. Back in the ’90s, the law required MTBE (I think), but that’s a carcinogen that was found to leach into the ground water, so ethanol became the goto.
I believe it is the EPA rules that determine where pure gas can be sold, and where it must have an oxygenate (such as ethanol). If an area is more polluted, it likely will not be able to have pure gas sold there.
The station around the corner sells Ethanol free and we top up the boat and water toys there each year prior to putting them in the water. But I still fuel by power tools on Tru-Fuel. A can may be on the shelf for one or two years depending on what I am doing and the additional cost is worth it.
I got the Costco green works 80v snow blower. It kicks ass. No gas.
It’s pretty much better in every way. No poison exhaust. And batteries power my mower, blower, pole saw, etc. Boat shop vac.
I was skeptical too. But battery blowers work.
Considering I burn a full tank of fuel through my blower during a good snow fall, battery isn’t there for me yet. I’d need a wall of batteries ready to swap out.
The trimmer is battery though, and you bet your ass the push mower is getting swapped for battery when it dies.
I live in MI, we get around 150″ of snow annually. I have a 5 year old Cub Cadet blower. I use regular gas up to 10% ethanol with Stabil. No problems. Before that I ran an Ariens for over 20 years, same fuel, no problems. It just finally wore out. FYI, my neighbor has an EGO 2 stage and a 90 foot two lane drive. She gets it all done on one charge.
My driveway is 50ft wide (half my property) and 3/4 of it needs to be blown to one side. Just clearing what the snowplow dumps at the end of the drive is enough to make most blowers struggle.
That doesn’t include the path to my propane tanks or the elderly neighbours whose driveway/walkway I clear as well.
I bought my commercial Ariens after my previous blower kept breaking trying to deal with the clearing I was doing.
Batteries go bad like fuel and are expensive and then you have a disposal problem. The more things change, the more they stay the same
I’d suggest trying Seafoam Gas Treatment. It works great in my 64 Chev and in all our gas powered yard equipment. The Chev sits all winter (6 months) but fires up fairly quickly in the spring. Same thing with the lawnmower and snowblower. It works as a stabilizer and also keeps the carb gunk free.
Steve, I am surprised Rob is not using SeaFoam in his power equipment and his gaggle of cars in the upstate warehouse. He could buy it by the case from a distributor to save a few bucks and it would be money well spent considering how seldom he pulls cars out of long term storage. I use SeaFoam in all my 1970’s cars because in the winter it may be a month before I get them out to give them a little exercise.
I will also recommend this. Seafoam works great. If you up the concentration of it to fuel it will really clean out carbon, etc.
I was going to make the same comment. I’ve been a believer in Seafoam since the 90’s. Colorado requires yearly emissions testing. Customer brings in car that failed testing. One of the partners came over and said you need to see this. Put the car on the test machine and sure enough, CO and HC’s are high, well over limit. He put a can of Seafoam in the tank while the car was still running and rocked it back & forth to help mix it in the gas. Within 5 minutes, CO & HC were down to levels well within requirements. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.
I have a generator and a pressure washer that are not used very often. I used to do the same thing as Rob on the pressure washer – remove carb, clean, reinstall and run. Nowadays, I just add some extra Seafoam to the gas on first start up, let it stutter for a few minutes until it runs clean and then use. Runs well for the rest of the summer. Rinse and repeat the following year.
I try very hard to DRAIN the carbs on any of my small engines after use. I have done this religiously with my seldom used generator and it starts reliably every time after months or years of sitting.
In general, small engines are evil devices designed to confound mechanics. In 90% of cases, the engines themselves are just fine, but all the little doofidgets attached to the engines require periodic replacement, go obsolete quickly, and often exceed the value of the device after a few years. The technology they employ and the possible failure modes also just don’t translate to folks used to working on bigger engines.
There is no good solution to the problems brought on by modern, ethanol “enhanced” fuels. It’s not formualted with small engines in mind at all. I am fortunate to have ethanol free fuel in town, and thats what gets put in the generator. But this is why I’ve switched to electric powered mowers, chainsaws, and other equipment. They sit so long that every year I have fuel problems of some type. Maybe the fuel gummed up. Maybe the hoses have dried out, maybe the o-rings in the needle valve dried out because I did remember to drain the tank. It was endless, and I hate feeling like I am working on the same problem over and over. For how I use the equipment, electric in this case works.
Where I live you can’t buy ethanol free gas so every spring I drain the Toro two stroke snowblower’s gas tank and then run it until it runs out of gas. I also use Stabil in all gas cans year round. That Toro is 25 years old so maybe it’s on borrowed time. Still has the original carb. Have replaced the rubber primer button and the hose from the button to the tank as they cracked, probably due to ethanol.
I’ve never had a problem running regular gas in any small engine. I always drain the tank on anything that’s going to sit for a while ( pressure washer, chainsaws, etc) & then when I need them, I take the air filter off & squirt a little gas right in the carb to start it. Sometimes it’ll take a couple extra shots to get it to keep running, but have NEVER had a carb clog on me, & the device will start right up on its own after the initial start.
After destroying many carburetors while leaving ethanol-containing gas in them, I switched over to ethanol-free and have never had a problem since-and I still leave the gas in their in the off season. You are lucky that your mail order carburetors worked so well. I found that OEM carbs cost $90 but the knock-offs cost $10 but you need to buy 3 to get one to work properly. Still a deal.
For fuel additive I like K100. Their mantra is “We Make Water Burn”.
BMW ships their bikes with that in them from the factory, and I’ve had good luck using it in snowblowers, weed whackers etc. If I recall, it is good for up to 2 years if you use the heavier dilution.
Typically fuel treatments that ‘make water burn’ contain alcohol. I looked at the SDS for K100 and sure enough… it contains that evil substance most people are treating fuel to combat
Use some Sta-bil and fill the tanks to the brim when they go into storage. Solves a multitude of problems. And suggest storing with high octane fuel as octane numbers tend to drop in fuel that is sitting.
Scott was wondering when someone was going to mention Sta-bil. I to have used it very successfully and still do on a 1954 3100 Chevy pickup that doesn’t get driven much. Also had success with it in multiple small engines sitting for long periods.
I got a free MTD Yard Machines snowblower that I got working with probably the same HOOAI carburetor. It also had the corroded float bowl. Was a fun machine, worked great, but I think there was an issue with the governor or I hadn’t adjusted the carburetor linkages correctly. It oversped and eventually threw a rod out the side. Now it’s sitting and awaiting a predator engine. Rob, don’t blow your Tecumseh engine like I did. And if you give up on replacing carburetors, I’ll buy your engine or the whole thing off you. It’s dumb that we don’t just drop $1200 on a nice Ariens compact 2-stage, but we wouldn’t be mechanics if we didn’t keep old stuff fixed up and running, would we?
If they sit for a few years, the oil channels in a Tecumseh will clog up. Get one started, and it will throw the rod through the case in about 5 to 10 minutes. I learned that with a free leaf grinder.
Tossing their rod is the way Tecumsehs fail but not from clogged oil passages as they have none. They are splash oilers.
I’ve read various theories about the rod failures but they all seem anecdotal and speculative. I read that running lower on oil, like at the lower end of the range on the dipstick, will do it. Or that you have to use the correct oil, maybe conventional 5W-30 only, not synthetic. I won’t know for sure whether the cause was a lubrication issue, some mechanism being gunked up and frozen, or simply the rpm going too high until I take it apart and examine the internals. Before it died, it did seem like the engine was overheating and smoking with a burning oil smell. I let it cool off, then checked the oil level. It was at the lower end of the acceptable range on the dipstick so I didn’t add any. Started it back up and after 10 seconds of running fast, it blew. I attributed the overheating to possible lean burn due to running low on fuel and driving on a slope. Thought the burning oil smell could be from being overfilled and running on a slope. Figured I’d let it cool off and then do the flat portion of the driveway to finish the fuel tank but I didn’t make it.
Living in Idaho, I can and DO buy ethanol free for my small engines as well as my ’79 Yamaha XS1100. I put Stabil in the 5 gallon tank when I fill it, and for three years they all start and run well. Clean the spark plug once a year on the small engines, and do the normal tunes, etc. on the XS.
Ethanol WILL KILL CARBS!!! It attracts water and instant hole in the float bowl. In small amounts, it also goes bad VERY quickly. I have a small fuel bottle I use when syncing carbs. With ethanol free gas, it’s good for about six weeks. With ethanol IN the gas, it’s bad after TWO weeks.
I have an XS750, and always use 10% ethanol (all that is available in my area). I try to never leave any of it in for more than a year (I only ride it about 100 miles/year), and always use a high-grade fuel stabilizer. So far (*knock* on wood), I have not had an issue with it. As they say, “Your results may vary.”
I hear ya! But I DO live in a state with Ethanol-free 90 octane fuel! Each winter before putting my CB750 Nighthawk away,I ALWAYS fill it to the top with that,along with a proportionate amount of Seafoam to help keep it stabilized! And every single year since I’ve owned it,I’ve always taken the cover off of it,checked the air in the tires,reinstalled it’s fully charged lithium-battery,and turn the key on,put it on full-choke,turn on the petcock,hit the starter button,and she always fires right up the first couple of cranks! As a side-note,I don’t use any OTHER fuel in it during the warmer months either! It ALWAYS gets fueled up with NON-ethanol fuel! Why try to fix something that isn’t broken?
Got any pilot friends? If you were here in SD I could get you a jug of 100 low lead for $4.99/gal. I fly a jet for a company but use it in the snowblower and airplane tug.
This article resonates because I went through the same trouble with a pressure washer that I *had* drained of fuel. Nonetheless, I was about to give up on it because the official OEM carburetor price wasn’t worth the hassle and I was ready to convert to electric. But then some internet research pointed me to cheap Amazon options and I replaced the carb and fuel likes for less than $20. Good enough for another season. Ultimately what did that gas-powered pressure washer in was a sale at Costco on a high-quality, highly-rated electric pressure washer. The gas powered one went to a guy like the guy Rob mentioned who probably flipped it to another guy who may or may not have learned his lesson about ethanol gas over-wintering in small engines.