Snow blower gear box

My neighbor came to borrow my blower the other day – his main auger stopped spinning. The shear pins are fine, the impeller spins, and it feels like the gears are toast.

I watched some videos about repair and they all split the machine and take the whole impeller/auger unit out to repair the gearbox. Is there a reason one could not save lots of steps by just removing the main auger bushing bolts, split the gearbox, and remove just the main auger to access the gears? You could access the worm gear/bushings/seal on the impeller with it still on the blower I assume?

If I recall from the past thread is all you need is a case of beer and The Famous Grouse will make a house call and fix it. He prefers to do the house call at 9:14 PM with a rush to fix it now request. Sorry I can’t help any more than that.

They may just be binding a bit and need some new lube. My blower is from 1999 and there was a recall on it, I think it originally had oil in the gear box but then they switched to grease, it ran well for about 10 years then started having issues. I pulled it apart and found there was only about 2 pumps of grease in it. I filled it up with grease and it has been working fine since. I think I just disconnected it at the shaft going back and pulled the rest out the front, wasn’t very hard to do.

i’ve been putting gear lube in the blower gearbox, and often wondered if shooting actual grease in it would be better!!!!

glenn57 wrote:

i’ve been putting gear lube in the blower gearbox, and often wondered if shooting actual grease in it would be better!!!!

Either one will work. Sometimes gear boxes will leak oil and grease is a good alternative for oil then

Pretty much what is happening too!

Yea it is not binding – it spins freely about halfway around suggesting to me that the gear is missing half its teeth.

I just don’t see why I can’t just remove the one main auger without messing with the impeller, but usually the people who know why know why.

tindall wrote:

Is there a reason one could not save lots of steps by just removing the main auger bushing bolts, split the gearbox, and remove just the main auger to access the gears?

No, you can’t do this on any model I’ve ever seen. You can’t split the case with the augers installed on the shafts. The augers ride on top of the shaft and are held in place by the shear bolts so they don’t spin on the shaft unless the shear bolts are broken. In order to slide the augers off of the ends of the shaft, the whole assembly has to be removed from the blower because each auger has to slide off the outboard side of the shaft. Only then can you split the gear case.

To back up a step, are you sure you can see the impeller shaft spinning as it enters the gearbox? And you are also 100% sure the shear bolts on the augers aren’t broken and just the heads are hanging on/rusted in place?

This is a SOB of a job because the impeller pully can be rusted on and need to be torched off or you need a gear puller and pull it. Then the impeller bearing can be seized on the shaft and needs to be removed without buggering up the shaft or you’ve got yet another problem.

And then you get all this way torn down and then the question becomes can you get the parts to rebuild it? You don’t say what brand or model, but I’d at least check on general parts availability by looking on some parts sites just to feel out the situation with the gear availability for the worm and shaft gear.

Rodwork wrote:

If I recall from the past thread is all you need is a case of beer and The Famous Grouse will make a house call and fix it. He prefers to do the house call at 9:14 PM with a rush to fix it now request. Sorry I can’t help any more than that.

No, no, no. He has to wait until the evening before the next big snow, and THEN do the above.

“You can’t split the case with the augers installed on the shafts.”

See, that is why the people who do it know, and it makes perfect sense now that I think about it.

One of the videos I watched showed nearly everything that could go wrong with this process which is why I was hoping to avoid messing with the pulley/etc because I don’t have the tools to help him if the bad stuff happens.

I do need to take a much closer look at the machine again because I just listened to what he said happened and went to his garage, spun the auger, looked at the pins and stuff but did not fire it up.

It is a crafstman 24″ blower that looks to be newer and rust free, but he bought it secondhand.

Luckily I picked up a toro single stage for $20 while buying something else from a guy and got it running with a gas swap and jet clean so my neighbor can have a blower while we sort it out. Maybe we just need more beer.

At a minimum, I’d look at cost and availability of the worm drive gear and the driven ring gear on the auger shaft. If you can’t get those parts easily, then I’m not sure I’d even start the teardown process.

It is hellish getting all these pulleys, bearings, and gears to slide off the rusted and corroded shafts on snowblowers. Spray lube alone will seldom do it, a die grinder with the scotch brite grinder head is what I use to polish the whole length of the shafts before trying to slide a bearing or gear off of the shaft. Again, it can be a real SOB.

Also, make sure that the drive pulley is at least available. I’m not saying order it, but check on it because I’d give it about a 44.7% chance it will get bent in the removal process. Make absolutely sure the pully is still true before you reassemble by laying it on a true surface because it’s not always obvious that it’s bent. Obviously, if it’s NLA, then you have to be super, super careful.

You will probably bugger up a seal or gaskets in the disassembly process. I take everything apart before I order parts to avoid having to order a second time to get the gaskets.

It can be done but this is a finesse job for sure to avoid screwing up parts in the process of trying to fix them. Not a job for the ham-fisted.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

At a minimum, I’d look at cost and availability of the worm drive gear and the driven ring gear on the auger shaft. If you can’t get those parts easily, then I’m not sure I’d even start the teardown process.

This. My dad had an older Toro. Ran like a champ, but the cost to fix the gearbox was excessive (and he has a neighborhood TFG of his own).