WELL!! After giving Arizona advice, I seemed to have succumbed to fuel gelling myself. I did treat my fuel with the “recommended” dose but since we had -28F here this morning, I am thinking the recommenders had not considered this level of cold. I think the dose was inadequate.
We had a bunch of wind with the low temps, but I had the tractor plugged in, and in an unheated shed so it started. The hydraulics were very, very stiff, as was the HST.
I got the snowblower running and warmed up and started blowing small drifts at 1/3 throtte, then increased to 3/4 throttle and progressively added more load with the hydrostatic.
Somewhere around 15-20 minutes, it suddenly lost a couple hundred RPMs, but recovered. Did this several times, then quit stone dead. It did restart after a dozen compression strokes, and I thought I better get this thing back in the shed.
I made it back and got it inside and shut it off.
Guess I will wait til Friday to try again. Lucky I can use the other driveway to get in and out of the yard.
Lesson: Don’t scimp on the anti-gel if you think it might get to -28F.