Rear Inverted Snowblowers 2019

Hilbilly · Jan 12, 2020

So after moving the shaft back on the Farm King blower last night and tightening the bearing retaining collars as much as I could, I figured I would take it for a spin today and give it a go in the 8" of dry snow that fell and was continuing to fall. Before I took off I measured the distance the drive shaft protruded out the back of the rear bearing (9/16") so I could easily stop and check to see if the shaft was starting to move forward again. I started out blowing and was happy with the way it was throwing snow, even with the 2 bent blades. I could move along at 6 to 8 kmh and the blower seemed to throw the snow further than the last time I tried it. After about 10 minutes I got out and checked to see if the shaft had moved and it was still protruding out the back 9/16". All is good and it is running smoothly. I start up again and got into some of the older snow that had been plowed to the side and gone through some freeze thaw cycles. A short distance later I heard what I thought was a change in the way the blower was running. I got off and sure enough the fan shaft had moved forward again. This is crazy. I had those retaining collars snugged down hard. I could even see score marks on the shaft from the grub screws that were clamping onto the shaft.

Either there are some parts missing from this blower that prevent the shaft from moving forward or this is a bad design. The only thing I can think of is that the harder snow and ice mixture was causing the fan to grab harder and pull itself forward. The blower should be able to handle this stuff with ease. That's what I've been doing with my old Meteor for 11 years and I did yesterday only that was much worse because I wasn't just shaving off a slice of the this harder snow, I had the whole blower buried in the bank and the top of the bank was about 18" above the top of the blower.

Something is seriously wrong with this blower.

airbiscuit · Jan 12, 2020

That is a pretty critical weakness.

airbiscuit · Jan 12, 2020

Hilbilly said:
It would be so much easier if there was only one universal connection method.

Well, it was just dumb on my part. I tried to take a shortcut by not taking it off the tractor, and caused myself extra effort. That said, so far I am happy with the design of the Meteor , but the owner's manual is typical - 20 pages of safety and decals, and 1 scant page on maintenance. All I want are decent assembly instructions/drawings, lubrication info and where the shear pins are located. They did however include all the 3pt pins, and 5 shear pins. Still no snow in sight.

Hilbilly · Jan 12, 2020

You should be here. My neighbors and I could keep you going for days. This has been the harshest winter since I've been here (11 years) and my neighbor who was born here has never seen anything like this.

kco · Jan 13, 2020

airbiscuit said:
Well, it was just dumb on my part. I tried to take a shortcut by not taking it off the tractor, and caused myself extra effort. That said, so far I am happy with the design of the Meteor , but the owner's manual is typical - 20 pages of safety and decals, and 1 scant page on maintenance. All I want are decent assembly instructions/drawings, lubrication info and where the shear pins are located. They did however include all the 3pt pins, and 5 shear pins. Still no snow in sight.

The shear pin for the auger is shown on page 22 and 23 of your manual, Airbiscuit. It is a grade 2, 5/16" x 1 1/4" OR a 1/4" x 1 1/4" (#22 on diagram). The parts diagram mistakenly shows both but you should be able to tell which is correct from the bolts they gave you.

Part #8 on page 22 says the PTO for your 68" blower is the same as the 60" blower. Page 32 is for a T40 PTO which looks like it is the one for the 60" and 68" blowers. The main shear bolt for the blower on the PTO shaft and is part #71 on page 32. It is a 8mm x 50mm bolt, metric class 8.8 which is similar to SAE class 5.

The larger T50 PTO would be for the 87" and 97" blowers. It's hard to tell if the 78" blower uses a T40 or T50.

If you want to confirm it you could call the MK Martin people.

If it is similar to my 2011 75", the only greasing should be the PTO universals, the two main auger bearings and I think the auger driveshaft bearing (part 23, page 22). Page 32 shows another grease fitting(part #71) by the shear bolt on the PTO shaft. My idler sprocket (part 14, page 22) does not have a grease fitting but I oil it.

airbiscuit · Jan 13, 2020

Thanks KCO, I saw all of that in the manual when I got the blower. I was just commenting on the voluminous text about safety and decals, and just one scant page on maintenance.

airbiscuit · Jan 13, 2020

Hilbilly said:
You should be here. My neighbors and I could keep you going for days. This has been the harshest winter since I've been here (11 years) and my neighbor who was born here has never seen anything like this.

Around here (NW WI) we often get 6" of snow or less. We might get 8"-12" once or twice a month, and 15"+ would be a major storm for us. You are describing crazy amounts of snow.

What do the locals do for snow removal?
Do they all have tractors and snowblowers?
Pickups and plows are efficient, but I don't see that working well with those snow totals.
Do people without adequate equipment just pay, or depend on the kindness of neighbors (could be a spendy winter)?
Municipalities must be struggling to keep up.
Any roofs collapsing due to snow load?

Hilbilly · Jan 13, 2020

Almost everyone has their own means of dealing with snow. There is one exception and he has nothing more than a snow shovel and from what I know he has irritated every neighbor around him so he is on his own. We live on 132 acres and my next door neighbor is on 107 acres. I'll call them D&A. Both of our properties are on the side of a mountain with relatively flat areas at the back of our properties. Both our driveways are on the steep section. My driveway is cut across the side hill to reduce the grades to about 10%. The bottom 300 feet or so is on his property and shared by both of us. He elected to build his driveway straight up the slope, which produced a very steep driveway, with the bottom shared section being around 15%. The rest of his driveway ranges from about 12% to 15%. The other neighbors live on the flats below us and their needs are very different, since they don't have to deal with the steep slopes. They all have pretty short driveways of around 100 feet or so. They use all sorts of differing equipment, including; tractors, skid steers, backhoes, plow trucks and walk behind snowblowers. I don't think any have tractor mount blowers, other than me and I now have 2 (but can only use one until I get the new one operational). D&A's driveway is about .5 km (1/4 mile) long and mine is 1.5 km (1 mile) long. He has a D6 dozer, mini excavator, skidsteer and tractor and none of them were of much use for the big dump we got. He didn't have chains for the skid steer or the tractor and the dozer was at the back of his property and inaccessible unless he wanted to hand shovel a path to it.

After 2 days I got my driveway open and then opened D&A's enough so they could get out and then went back to finishing mine up on day 3. I went back to their place to help out some more. They are now looking to get a new skidsteer, with chains and a snow blower.

The highways contractor that looks after the roads took 4 days to get to our local road, so it was up to the locals to find their own way to the main roads.

As far as I know no roofs have collapsed.

Hilbilly · Jan 13, 2020

Back to the FK blower. I talked to the dealer this morning and he seemed very concerned and said he would get my pics to the closest FK rep and see how fast they could get parts to me. I described what I found and he concurs with my thoughts that the bearing retaining collars were not properly tightened. He suggested taking it to one of the local FK dealers since he is so far away from me but also said they would put this work on the back burner since I didn't buy the blower from them. I said I could replace the parts but had 2 concerns; 1) would that void the warranty and 2) what if there are other parts that were damaged by this and I didn't notice those damages. He suggested the shaft is likely damaged too and may not be usable again.

Now I wait to see what FK proposes to resolve this. Hopefully I will get a positive response and can get this dealt with at minimal cost to me and in a timely manner.:crossfingers: