Anyway, now for some hints

The cable for pulling the pin so you can change the angle of the brush (between left, center and right) sticks straight up, then goes backwards towards the engine before going up to the handlebars. But just where it connects to the pin, the cable can just flop around and it winds up being really easy to kink right there.

I fixed this so the cable doesn't flop around by using a cable tie-down clip on the belt cover to hold it against the belt cover and now it doesn't flop around every much.

As well, something my dad came up with to make it easy to take the belt cover off easier, without needing to use a wrench, is to braze some washers onto the bolts so you can grip them.

See the attachment for both of these things.

 

There are two belts driving the brush, and I kept having problems with them coming off and/or one of them getting stretched more than the other one.

Two things were causing these problems.

First, the two bolts on each side of the frame, holding the frame to the brush attachment wouldn't stay tight, so there would be about a 1/4" gap at the top of the frame to the brush attachment, and this would stretch the front belt longer than the rear belt.

Second, Ariens didn't figure out how to get the engine pulley properly aligned with the pulley on the brush attachment. They were offset just about a 1/2 belt width, so the rear belt would come off the brush attachment pulley and the front belt would go into the rear pulley of the brush attachment pulleys. I fixed this by making some shims that fit on the engine drive shaft, between the pulley that drives the rear wheels and the pulleys the power the brush attachment. The second attachment is an extra one that was left over. Now, the pulleys are aligned within maybe 0.1" and the belts haven't come off in years, vs maybe every other time I used the Power Brush. The salesman (same one as before) told me there was no adjustment for this, and I just had to live with it coming off all the time.

 

Along the driveshaft, right below the pivot point of the brush attachment, there is a u-joint. The manual says that if you can hear it making noise, you should try lubing it, and if that doesn't work, replace it.

I would suggest that you lube it regularly, before it starts making noise. There's a grease nipple in it. :OHCAN

 

And now for my question. The worm gear for the powerbrush has been replaced a couple of times, and now has one that seems to still be working fine, but I found part of a rubber seal on it's input shaft. It doesn't look like it came out of the worm gear, and it doesn't look like it belongs on the other end of the shaft (which is splined and goes into one end of the u-joint).

There is some oil that has come out of the worm gear, but it doesn't look like much and the seal on the the shaft looks fine/intact to me.

Could it just be the nimrods at the dealership left the seal on the shaft from the old worm gear or does it belong on the current worm gear?

 

Finally got tired of always having to clean up oil all over the side and top of the frame because Ariens cheaped out on the oil drain extension and used one a little too short to be able to readily drain the oil into a pan without it getting everywhere.

So, today I decided to make a slightly longer extension.

Here's the old vs the new one:

Here's the new one installed on the machine:

And a shot of one very ugly 17mm hex head. But that's what you get when you freehand it on a bench grinder in a couple minutes...