The Snowblower Saga

They weren't kidding when the forecast called for snow. 

It started about 11:00PM-ish on Friday night, at little earlier than predicted for the area, and it was coming down hard and fast.  By the morning, we had a good half a foot.  If this was going to keep up, and since the newscast had upgraded us from a winter storm warning to a blizzard warning, we figured the snow was going to keep coming down at a ridiculous pace the rest of the day.  That means we'd also have to keep pace with it in clearing it.

Now we have a Craftsman snowblower that we bought the year we moved into the house.  It's massive, and it doesn't get used that often because we don't have that many snowfalls per year.  Of the ones we do have, 99% of the time our Subaru WRXs don't even flinch in getting up and down our driveway.  So we don't bother with the snowblower.  We used it the first year we got it as we had a good foot one snowfall.  Since then, it has sat. 

We tried starting it last winter, just to see if it would start, just in case.  Nope, wouldn't start.  It churns but won't turnover.  We tried starting it this summer, no go.  Then by yesterday afternoon, it was clear we would have no choice but to figure out how to get this thing started else we had a long day of back breaking shoveling ahead of us.  Steve stopped by the autoparts store and picked up a can of carborator cleaner and a can of ether. 

By the time I got home with the kids, Steve was in the garage trying to get the thing to start but was having no luck.  The project was postponed to today.

So this morning, after breakfast, Steve went into the garage to continue where he left off.  He pulled off the caborator and cleaned it.  He drained it of the old gas, put it back together, added the gas we bought last year (so, newer gas than what was in it) and gave it a shot of carborator cleaner.  It almost started.  Steve pulled out the spark plug, cleaned it, put it back together and VROOM!!!  It started!!  Party on, Wayne!

Steve and the infamous snowblower

Steve proceeded to clean the snow off the driveway, but he said it was running rough.  When he was at the bottom of our driveway, it stalled.  Good thing we have a very long extension cord (electric start)! 

When Steve came back in, he was thinking the govenor was wrong and thus why it was running rough.  During the kids' nap, he changed it, and voila!  It worked like a champ.  Halfway up our driveway, it stalled again, and Steve couldn't get it started, despite the extension cord electric start.  "Oh, duh, I ran it out of gas!"  I was outside hoping to get some footage with our new Kodak HD video camera, heard that, and lost it.  Hilarious!! 

The snowblower has been running great since.

Bravo Steve for getting it running!  Saved us a HUGE amount of work....