Ice on Driveway- Will it hurt snowblower?

shawnmd said:

I have a LA145 with 44" snowblower which has been working excellent. However, I missed a snowfall this weekend that was quite slushy, which immediately froze. I used salt on it and melted most of it but now there is a lot of pieces of ice over the driveway. It just snowed again and I am concerned that the blower will pickup ice and damage the auger or chute. Will it hurt anything?

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Shawn,

I believe that your snowblower is safe. In the past when this happened the pieces that broke off were small enough to just pass right on through. Take it slow at first until it sounds right.

Be sure to wash the snowblower and tractor as soon as possible after working salt.

Jerry

Shouldn't be a problem. Worst case scenario might be a broken shear pin, but I even doubt that will happen.

shawnmd said:

I have a LA145 with 44" snowblower which has been working excellent. However, I missed a snowfall this weekend that was quite slushy, which immediately froze. I used salt on it and melted most of it but now there is a lot of pieces of ice over the driveway. It just snowed again and I am concerned that the blower will pickup ice and damage the auger or chute. Will it hurt anything?

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I would think that the salt over time would be more of a hazzard than the ice. Make sure to clean that blower good.

I abused my snowblower this past weekend in similar conditions. Paved driveway was ice covered (gets scraped down but the driveway rarely sees direct sun light and freezes over). The ice was covered w/ 4" of light snow and then the top of the snow was 1" of icy/crusty thick snow. It chewed it all up fine. I did drive right into a frozen bank by the mailbox to try and keep that area cleaned out. It did better than I expected and I did not know until I was done that doing this sheared a pin. I thought it was odd I had larger than normal pile in front of the blower each time I lifted it but I just figured it was plowing the icy chunks more than it would regular snow.

You should be fine, maybe just keep the nose (for lack of better word) of the chute "up" as much as possible.:fing32:

For a bit of crusted ice on top of snow it shouldn't be a problem, say 1/2 - 3/4" thick. If it's too much your shear pin will go. I've chewed through that with no problem, but I have a single stage and the auger rotates much faster so it pulverizes the ice. Your first stage should break it up into small pieces and then your second stage should be able to pulverize it; as long as your blower isn't one of the newer ones with a plastic double stage. On a side note; it makes no sense why mother JD moved to a plastic second stage . . . other then saving on production cost and still charging the same to the end user.

Like others have said should be ok....I have the exact same set up

My #44 had to deal with snow, ice and water ( it didn't freeze all the way down) and the plastic impeller and chute did fine!
BTW.. I'm in the minority, but I like the plastic chute

UPDATE.... The snowblower chewed right through it. Made a **** of a lot of noise and sound like I was killing it, but there wasn't a mark on it.

shawnmd said:

UPDATE.... The snowblower chewed right through it. Made a **** of a lot of noise and sound like I was killing it, but there wasn't a mark on it.

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"I love the sound of ice chunks hitting the chute in the morning. It sounds like..... victory!" (with all due apologies to Robert Duvall)