I was dragging by the end of the week. The combination of work, stress, recovering from injury and fighting off illness really slowed me down. All I really wanted to do is perfect the art of couch potato. I couldn't completely zone out. Our snow thrower wasn't working and with a storm predicted, we really wanted to fix it.
After researching online, (what would we do without Youtube?), we think we diagnosed the problem and set about the fix. This is huge for us, because we aren't normally mechanically inclined.
The auger and fan would turn until you threw snow at it. Then the fan would stop. We took apart the machine and replaced the auger belt, even though at first glance, it didn't look like it needed replacing. We put the thrower back together and ta daa.... it began to throw snow again. Of course the real test comes tomorrow after the storm arrives.
I'm proud we troubleshooted and attempted to fix it ourselves. Of course it helped knowing we couldn't take it anywhere to be fixed in time for the snow storm. We could have committed ourselves to snow shoveling the old fashioned way while waiting for a professional to fix our problem, or we could take a stab at it ourselves and perhaps find a solution on our own. If the machine truly throws the 6-10 inches we're expecting to get, I'll be so happy! If not, at least we learned a great deal more about our snow thrower.
We conquered our fear of the unknown and didn't allow our inexperience to intimidate us. We'd have to take the machine apart anyway to fit it into the car to drive to a repair shop. What was the worse we could do? It was already broken.
Actually, we did practically break another small part, but we're ready to fix that if it breaks all the way. The auger cable was really poorly designed, using a too soft metal for the holding pin. The pin is cracked, but we have a fix ready if or when it decides to give way.
Sometimes finding solutions, uncovers more problems, but the autodidact learns from them and with that comes confidence. We just can't give up. We have to keep learning.
3 comments:
So glad to hear you got the snowblower working and I never thought of researching on youtube to fix something, thats one I will have to remember. I can remember snow shoveling alot when I was growing up, I can remember a few big storms when it would take 2 days to shovel out our driveway.
I hope you feel better soon, get some rest and try to relax for a bit
Hugs ACross the Miles
Congratulations on the successful DIY project!!
Congrats on fixing your snow blower. I always tried to fix things myself before calling someone to repair it and have been successful many times. I think as you did, can't make it any worse and if it can save me some money why not.
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