Posted on 10/14/2010 9:17:44 AM PDT by hc87
Paul, “I was looking at your reviews on your website MovingSnow.Com and was reading the reviews that you were giving. I must admit that you saved me from making a huge mistake. A friend of mine was going to give me his old 22” Sears Craftsman snow blower (it needs work). After reading your review on how much of a piece of crap the thing is; I went out and bought myself a 26” Troy Built 2 stage. Do you have any reviews about this machine?
(Excerpt) Read more at movingsnow.com ...
Thanks
Don’t you watch the news? There won’t be any snow in the coming years. No polar bears.
Invest in air conditioning.
/sarc
Snow??? What is snow, I forgot what it looks like. In FL we don’t have to shovel the heat, no mater how long the driveway is. We don’t miss Troy either. I’d go with a Troy built over a Craftsman. If I remember correctly Craftsman is a different colored model of a MTD.
What is missing from the article is that ALL of the machines listed are under the company MTD. Look up a website for MTD, that will have parts, manuals etc on PDF files. You will find that all of the companies are MTD. Many engines are the same, either Tecumseh, or Briggs and Stratton (US/Mexico) or maybe Kohler. I’d stay away from Tecumseh, other 2 are okay. So then you have to differentiate between the ease of operation, reliability and design differences in the blower. I don’t have one, but have a Troy-Bilt largest garden tractor for the lawn/garden. Anything else, would use the belly mower on the Deere full size tractor. Good luck. It is discouraging to try to find a product.
Yeah, the climate models are wrong. There won't be increased evaporation off the oceans and increased snowfall. We're going back to those pre-CAA days of low snowfall!
Then again, maybe you can use it for the loess that's obviously coming... </sarc>
Give me a big Honda snow blower every time! They are tough, simple and WORK!
Stick it down in the fuel tank, push down on nozzle and swish around on your way out of the tank, quickly cap it and start.
I do it this way because all the shrouding hides the intake area.
Plus it helps during the warm period of the little engine.
I am quite happy with my Ariens, going strong after 10 years. Simply change the belts and the oil once a year and you are good to go.
I’ll take my Ariens 24 inch model any day. Always dependable, goes through even the deepest (in excess of 2 feet deep) snows easily. I can do my 15 X 200 driveway in 45 minutes or less.
> I love the little red Toro’s w/the rubber turbo thrower, you can add octane boosters to your fuel mix & throw snow clear into the next county!
I have one too. It is great.
I also have a large 12HP 2 stage snowblower. I got the little toro 3 years ago and although I prep both of the darn things for winter every year, I haven’t actually used the big one for clearing the driveway since I got the little toro. (I live in Buffalo, the snow capital of the USA, I have an 80 ft driveway and a about 100 ft of sidewalk).
Honda are the best. PERIOD. Simplicity are next, followed by Ariens ,Snapper and Toro. All the rest are junk.
However, they are also the most expensive.
Look on Craigslist for a good used Simplicity. 8-9 HP with 24-26”.
Make sure whatever you get has a cast iron front gearbox.
sounds like chainsaws...there are only 4 chainsaw factories in the entire world, but dozens of brands...
And the guy from Buffalo knows snow! :-)
We can get a lot of lake effect snow here in West Michigan. I had a 6hp 2-stage Toro for 23 years and it refused to die (I wanted a bigger one for my 300+ feet of driveway). I gave up waiting, left it at my in-laws place and bought myself a new Toro anyway...
Troy-Bilt is now MTD and the quality was apparently "removed for clarity"!
Ditto on the Ariens. I’ve had one for eight years with no problems - just keep it lubed and make a few clutch adjustments after it gets broke in. My driveway is 150’x10’ and it got me through back-to-back record snowfall seasons (over 300 inches total).
I bought an MTD, 26 in 10HP, electric starter, two-stage snow blower in 1999.
Keep the oil changed, replace the skid shoes, have had one set of belts and it's been great for about a dozen winters in W PA.
I did select the "tank treads" instead of tires, and with 5 forwards and 2 reverse speeds, you can't stick this thing.
If it's junk, I'm a happy junk collector.
Don’t know about snow blowers, but I can tell you about the stupid design of my Troy-Bilt rototiller. It has counter-rotating tines so they throw the tilled dirt forward. Nice idea, except also tosses rocks and pebbles forward which then find their way into the drive pulley, dislodging the belt, which then jams between the pulley rim and the chassis. You know this happens when the thing slows down and you smell burning belt. The belt is so jammed up you need to disassemble the machine to repair it.
Troy-Bilt’s “solution” to this design error? Take off the guard around the pulley so the pebbles and stones fall out before they get a chance to bounce around inside the guard and land in the pulley!
Based on this design excellence, I would never buy another of their products.
I do have to say, though, when it is not ingesting belt/pulley jamming stones, it works very nicely. Good power (Honda engine), good transmission, lots of power. Just try not to till an area with marble-sized stones.
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