New snowblower

[Bear]

After 28 years of hard work my Toro 7.5 hp blower finally got to the point of no return - either put money into it or retire it. After a lot of reading here and two other forums I decided to buy an Ariens ST11528LE 11.5 hp blower. I would have settled for the 9 horse had it not been for the L-head engine design. $1299 minus 10% at Home Depot. I checked their machines as much as possible and they seem to be well assemblied. I checked at several other places including our local "power equipment" dealer where no one came out to help me ( too cold?) while I played around with their selections.
I plan on running it with the provided oil for two hours and then switching to synthetic.Now I can't wait for a good snow storm! Any tips or experince with this particuliar blower?

 

[Drew]

Good luck. I had some problems with my 25+ year John Deere mower but after seeing my neighbor's experience with his new Ariens I decided to repair it.

Compared to my John Deere, the materials and workmanship is inferior. The sheetmetal on the "scoop" housing is very thin and bends very easily. The shear bolts and shaft that the impeller rides on will break if you sneeze at it. My neighbor's snowthrower breaks every other time he uses it due to rock ingestion. My John Deere is much sturdier. Also, he had to return his blower twice because of either engine oil leakage or excessive consumption/blowboy in the exhaust which ruined his new concrete driveway with stains.

I hope your luck is better than my neighbors. After I saw his experience, I bought a paddle kit for my impeller which greatly improved the performance of my blower.

 

[JTK]

Bear, don't sweat it, you've got about as good a machine as you can get today. None of the housings, brackets, assemblies, etc.. are made like they used to be 20+ yrs ago. Simplicity still builds a fairly old-school heavy housing machine, but that's about it. You will love that OHV engine over a flat head. It's the only way to go for a snowblower application IMO.

Joel

 

[Drew]

Heres a good link for a fairly durable one that is custom built. Check out the 454 cubic inch model.

http://www.v8snowblowers.com/id6.html

 

[Bror Jace]

Bear, I agree 100% with JTK.

I have the same machine. If you search this forum using the words "snowblower" and/or "Ariens" you will find several long threads of snowblower discussion.

Your model is the one we bought in 2004. It is the slightly lighter-duty model with the aluminum front diffy instead of the cast iron, right?

We have a 20+ year old John Deere 1032 and while the machine has seen a lot of use (and some abuse) it's still kicking ... but has about a 3rd of its parts replaced at least once. Most recently, we had the case re-welded becasue the vibration of the engine cracked all the way around.

It's on its last legs and that's why we got the Ariens.

The sheetmetal of the Ariens seems thicker than other snowblowers these days ... Husquavarna and every machine made by MTD (Yardman, CubCadet, Huskee, etc ...)

I had some initial break-in "issues" with the machine I needed to address before it would work properly. Do a search and you should be able to find the threads where I discuss what I did.

--- Bror Jace