So I've been dumb and forgot to engage PTO before starting to blow...

[Torvy]

I don't know about that - seems that as the years go by, I read more and more about snow and ice storms in Texas. In another 100 years, Canada will be warm and mild and Texas will be a frozen tundra......

I think the news is a bit too sensationalized. I've been here 16 years. If you took every wintry day in that 16 years, you wouldn't get 2 months of winter north of Kansas, much less Canada.

 

[nyone]

I think the dumber thing is not having a handful of sheer bolts on hand.

 

[SylvainG]

I had one, none left after I replaced it. Bought five extra at Home Depot the following day

 

[oosik]

I have a mile long gravel driveway - mailbox area - big yard. For 27 years I used a 3-point, PTO driven blower. I learned quickly - before the first snow. Do a FOD( foreign object debris ) walk down my driveway. Saves on shear bolts.

Large rocks, frozen pine cones, limbs - all look about the same to a blower.

 

[SylvainG]

Yeah, mid fall, I used my box grader to re-level my 1000 feet private road and then removed stones that would have otherwise be ingested by the blower. So far, in two years, the only time I've sheared a bolt was because of a dumb mistake. Hopefully it will keep that way but I'm not counting on it, hence the extra shear bolts lol.

 

[oosik]

I've given up on my blower and sold it twelve years ago. I still have a sack of shear bolts. Now with the larger tractor - the rear blade does the job. Including moving the berm back.

I can never remember a year where the first or second trip clearing the driveway didn't result in, at least, one bolt sheared. I would do a pretty intensive FOD walk too.

Sometime clearing the berms with the blower resulted in strange items becoming air born. Mice and pocket gophers who had tunnels in the berms. Just a very soft "thump".