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.

***

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.