Rebuilding the flighting on a single stage blower for the Bolens Hard face or wire?

[CalG]

The fights of the blower have seen so much scraping that the edges are all rolled over and bent. I went all over the elements with a pair of heavy hammers to bring things closer to right, But I can't put metal back on with hammers.

In past years I have built up damaged areas of the auger flights with SMAW, but this time I've got the auger pulled for new bearings, and want to do the repair "right".

A few hours were spent today with the small side grinder taking off the "burr" that had formed continuously on all four flights. I'm happy to see those gone, as they were like razor wire looking for blood.

I'm going in to the metal mongers shop tomorrow and coming back with either 25 feet of 3/16 or 1/4 steel wire and 10 pounds of 6000 series filler rod, or 10 pounds of hard facing / build up rod. (I know which will be less costly ;-)

I'm inclined towards the wire re-enforcement due to the many dings gaps and thin sections at the flight edges.
I suppose if I had a MIG set up, I could make passes enough to build up just about anything. I have just a AC buzz box to do metal melting, (getting used to it after 30 years ;-) Building on the flight edges is pushing my limits as far as a steady hand goes. (that and the many hollows and thin spots on the flights.

Anyone with ideas on the subject? I could go with strapping instead of wire, but it all needs to bend in a 1 foot diameter helix , and round wire hand bends pretty easily.

 

[leonz]

Hello CalG,

Sorry to here the snow blower rotor bearings went to the happy hunting ground. I am going to offer another suggestion If you will allow me to do so.
Rather than fight with tack and weld and fill and tack and weld the ribbon from one end to the other I think you may be much better off doing a bit of surgery by cutting serrations in the ribbon flighting.

By cutting serrations in the ribbons the snow is shredded into its smallest portion and not pushed outwards back into the snow pack as open auger snow casters are always doing except in very light snow falls. Many if not most of the 2 stage walk behinds now have serrated auger flighting following the Yamaha snow blower models use of the serrations in their ribbon flighting. My feeling would be to install some blue strip slick sheet material from Horn Plastics using the flat head anchor bolts that Farm Tek sells to secure the plastic sheeting it sells.

At the same time I would also line the impeller housing with a wide strip of the blue stripe slick sheet as well making sure the drain hole is left open if your 2 stage unit has one in the bottom of the housing. As the cross auger is removed you could easily place a sheet inside the housing and then mark the circle for the impeller housing opening with a marks a lot pen to cut it in one smooth hole opening.You could also line the side weldments of the snow blowers housing as the cross auger is removed by using cardboard to mark the bearing locations and then cut the bearing housing hole out using the cardboard as a template.

 

[muddstopper]

One other method I might consider is using carbon backing blocks to weld up those thin edges. WeldingSupply. You can lay the carbon up against the back side of the weld area and just start running beads. If you can weld with some sort of hardening rod or wire, the fix should last a long time and sure would beat the heck out of cutting out and welding back strips of metal. Drilling and bolting all that hard plastic wouldnt be fun either

 

[CalG]

One other method I might consider is using carbon backing blocks to weld up those thin edges. WeldingSupply. You can lay the carbon up against the back side of the weld area and just start running beads. If you can weld with some sort of hardening rod or wire, the fix should last a long time and sure would beat the heck out of cutting out and welding back strips of metal. Drilling and bolting all that hard plastic wouldnt be fun either

I've thought on that. Though I have copper blocks on hand. Of course the flight shape is a helix, making a flat support bar just about worthless. I suppose there could be a two handed technique where the support block is moved along with the filler rod. I'm not going there. I've hard enough time watching the puddle ;-)

I picked up 1/4 " wire. and 5# of 6013 electrodes. I should have asked to run the wire through the pinch roll. 10 minutes could have had the length in a nice coil ready to tack. Oh Well, I might have to rig up a winder in the lathe. an old brake rotor should serve as the bending mandrel. I'll be careful to watch for that bitter end. ;-)

 

[boomer1025]

Why don't you just replace the flighting on the shaft

 

[CalG]

Why don't you just replace the flighting on the shaft

95% of the fighting is good. Maybe more. It seems rather drastic to toss that much for so little.

That and flighting comes in five foot lengths and I would need two, right and left. Ten feet of flighting to cover 4 feet of auger seems wasteful. But as a double start, it would only be two 1 foot sections to spoils. ;-)

That and the overall cost in hard $$$ . The blower is not worth the time and effort, Yet it is "irreplaceable" for this particular tractor. Have you tried to locate a snocaster lately? It's got to spin the right way;-)