MTD Snowblower Doesn't Move - HOW to FIX!

so we got a Yard Machines 8 horse 26 inch and it's got an unusual problem the axle right here is seized and when you pull the machine forward or back doesn't want to go so we have an issue where something underneath the access panel down under there is binding up my guess is something to do with the gears and it's going to require us to flip this machine up remove the access panel and then have a look at what's going on okay so we've drained the oil on this snowblower and we've removed the 3/8 bolts on the access panel at the bottom here here is our model number just so you guys know now you normally don't have to drain the oil to flip these up it needed an oil change anyway so we went ahead and drain the oil this cable right here which runs up to the right side of your handle and that lever up there controls your drive so what happens is when you push on that lever it puts tension on this cable which lifts up this plate now this plate is always spinning when your engine is running because there's always tension on your drive belt so we have the drive belt right under there you guys can see it so when you push on that lever to engage your drive it puts tension on this cable which lifts up the spinning plate and then again that transfers power to your friction wheel right here now there's two axles on this there's the lower axle right here and that one basically has your friction wheel and then it has a couple little gears on it and then we have the axle up top which has your tires so essentially when you engage your drive again power transfers from here to the friction wheel and then from this axle through the gears to this axle up here so what I'm gonna do is take my socket and remove the bolt and we're gonna see if we can get this tire and this wheel off of the axle just so I can free up this bottom axle here and then by taking those clips off I should be able to slide things over and then I should be able to see if we can free that up and then same thing with the top axle you know we're just gonna go step by step and I think it's just a case of one of the bearings that is getting seized up and this should just slide right off sometimes they can get seized but this one we were able to just slide it right off so now that our wheel is off we can get access to our clip here's the bearing that goes around that axle that could be seized as well we don't know so that's why we're taking it all apart and now that you got your wheels off now is a great time to go and just clean that up with a wire wheel there's a washer there's a plastic spacer and then there's another washer here with your bushing and you can see it just pops right in there now is also a good time to check your bushings these are just plastic sometimes they're made out of brass but you want to make sure that they're not out of round that bad and make sure that they don't wobble this one wobbles a little bit but it's still okay so we don't have to replace that and now that we've pulled our bushing out of the little holder there the axle on this side has been brought up just slightly and it's actually enough to go ahead and spin this slowly so we don't want to damage anything because it's slightly making contact with the bottom gear but what this proves is that nothing is seized in here so if we look here the axle is spinning so we know that we're not seized on this gear so I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing on this side and then we'll start working on this bottom axle now that we've identified the problem area what I've done is gone ahead and popped this little clip off here now to do that you just want to go in with a standard screwdriver and just give it a little pry up and it should pop right off now once you pull this little clip off you have access to your bearing and what we can do is just reaching in here with my left hand I'm going to just lift the axle up slightly and we're gonna remove this bearing now again it might be seized on to the shaft so you might have to give the axle a little tap but we can see that our bearing came right off now I know right away that this bearing on the right side of the machine isn't the problem because if I put my finger in here and I spin this you guys can see this bearing is not seized so I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing for this side okay so I now have both bearings off the axl and onto the workbench this is from the right side this one's from the left side and if we take a look at how they spin you guys can see that the one on the right spins freely the one on the left though doesn't it's got a little bit of binding and there's some grinding in there which isn't good so we're gonna have to replace the bearing for the cost of the bearings probably replace them both even though this one's okay there's a slight wobble to it which is left and right which is no good so we'll probably end up replacing both of these bearings and there is going to be a stamped number somewhere on this bearing but if you can't for some reason see that number I'll get you a part number for both of these bearings okay now that we have the bearings on either side of this axle off and the clearance now because the bearings are off the axle has dropped down slightly what we can do here is just spin the axle by hand and we can see that the axle is spinning on the friction wheel assembly bearing so we know that that is now not seized okay so now we've taken off both of our bearings on each side of the bottom axle there now it's not seized which means that there's another problem on our machine here so on these MTD gear drive systems here you have two gears on this side this one and that one they're connected and these are on a little bearing that go over top of that shaft and these are supposed to spin freely while this one is connected to the axle you can see me spinning it there now on the bottom axle you're going to have the opposite your left ear here is going to be fixed to the axle and this gear here with the one on the right is supposed to spin freely now what you're going to notice is when I try to spin this look what happens it moves about a quarter-inch forward and back sure enough the machine only moved about a quarter inch forward and back so we know that it is the bearing on this gear here that goes onto this shaft that's causing our issue and this is just caused by improper maintenance guys so you want to be lubricating all of these gears but the thing is you know if somebody goes in here and lubricate this you can get oil onto this disc and your friction wheel which you don't want to be doing so the thing to do for preventative maintenance on these machines is going here and lubricate Rey inside here lubricate right outside of here go down here and lubricate all inside here you want to be lubricating those gears and then what you're going to want to do is take some brake cleaner or some carb cleaner with a rag or oil and grease remover and you want to wipe this down but because there was no preventative maintenance on this thing we now have a seized bearing on that axle gear and we're gonna have to take this off so how do we do that well first things first because we have a bigger gear on this side than we do down here this is going to have to slide over to do that we have a little eclip here we also have an e clip over here so we're gonna have to pop these clips off and then we'll be able to slide our gear over and this is also a great time to have a little LED flashlight and a magnet on a stick because that little eclip popped off and it sprung up hit here and then fell in behind so having a little magnet on a stick allows you to reach in there grab it and then you don't have to flip the machine down and find it afterwards now we're gonna be pulling this axle out from out of here the thing is you guys are gonna want to watch because there are key ways on these gears here so if you're moving your gears left and right you might have something drop out again that's why I like to use that little magnet on a stick it's just a lot easier to go in there and pick stuff up you guys are gonna have to know the order in which things go and what I mean by the order of things is we have let's say out here we have a washer we have a plastic spacer and then on the left side of the machine you actually have your bushing for your axle on the inside and then there's an e clip that's holding that together then we have a washer we have our gear we have another little washer inside of there then we have our gear and then going out here we have our axle bushing on the outside plastic spacer and then a washer so again when you guys pull all this stuff out when you put it back together you want to make sure that everything is in the order now I'm having some trouble getting this plastic spacer off it's pretty seized and again that's just because of lack of maintenance lack of lubrication whereas this side it's a little rusty but this one slid right off so what I'm using is what I call a tie rod removal tool and this thing basically it allows me to go up in behind over top of the axle and apply a light pressure to the back of that spacer so this is a very slow process again I'm not trying to damage anything I'm just trying to go in there and apply a little bit of pressure to that spacer until it starts to come off a little easier now I should be able to pull it off by hand right there and sure enough I can slide it off now okay so now that our top axle is for the most part free we want to slide this gear and this year over slightly so that we can move this gear over and get it off of our key to do that again there's a little eat clip down there so you're gonna pop that off we're gonna go ahead and slide this over to the left and that will allow us to slide this gear over and get our key out so this gear right here it's not held on by a key it's basically just got a hex on it so if it holds itself on to the hex shaft without a key now we can see that our little bearing has been exposed so once you get the clip off and you move this bearing over it will allow you to move this whole axle over to the left which now gives you enough room up here to move your gear over to get your key out and then we should be ready to pull this whole axle out with this shaft slid like this you should be able to get this gear right off without having to remove that upper axle so here's our gear sure enough there's all sorts of rust coming out of it and if we look inside of here we can see that they're just roller bearings and moisture gets in there and that's it guys those little rollers in there they just get seized to the point where they don't move you know like the one does a little bit but again you guys can see that it only moves but a quarter of an inch forward and back and that's it so there's our problem so I'm gonna have to order some parts here mainly those two odor bearings now you can pull off the little rubber seal there and clean them out and then pack them full of grease to reuse them but I don't really suggest reusing old bearings and chances are if you're turning them and you hear little bits and grinding noises they've just outlasted their life expectancy and a lot of these parts do have a life expectancy they're only built to last a certain amount of time so we're gonna definitely go ahead and replace those two outer bearings and those part numbers are a 9 4 1 0 5 6 3 so those are a bearing with retainers on them so we're gonna go ahead and replace both of those now as far as those gears with the roller bearings on them I'm gonna show you guys a little trick on how to clean them and try to salvage those bearings if they're so bad to the point where the roller bearings have actually become damaged and it's not just a case of those little rollers in there seizing up then you're gonna have to order a completely new gear now there's 2 part numbers and they're very very similar guys so if we look over here we're gonna see nine one seven zero 402 5a now that's going to be your upper you'll notice that the smaller gear is slightly shorter and then your bottom gear you're gonna have a nine one 704 oh two 6a so the 25 is the top and the 26 is the bottom and you'll notice that the smaller gear there is slightly wider so again the 25 is your upper and the 26 is your lower those are quite expensive so hopefully our little trick here that I'm going to show you how to do is going to help us save those bearings because you can't buy them separately you have to buy the whole piece and if you do happen to snap one of those little earrings because I know sometimes when you go to pull them off you can bend them damage them those part numbers are a nine one six oh two three one so if you needed any of those I figured I'd include that as well and as always guys links are going to be in the description down below so you can always click down there and check out all the part numbers that I've used in this video now my little trick to free up all these roller bearings I have an ultrasonic cleaner so obviously I'm gonna clean up the solution in there we're gonna use some hot water with some industrial-strength degreaser and what I'm going to be doing is putting probably both of these gears inside of the ultrasonic cleaner let it run let it blast out all of that rust and all that nasty stuff inside of there now if you're on a budget or you don't have one of these ultrasonic cleaners because they are quite expensive you can go ahead and use some brake cleaner and spray it in there and then take a rag push a rag through here and then turn it to get those rollers moving so that you're kind of cleaning as much as you can once you get all of that nasty orange rust out of here then you can go ahead and pack this full of grease and once you've cleaned that up then you're gonna want to go ahead and clean up this shaft so again you can see there's rust all over this shaft and again that's because no lubrication got in there so over time because this bottom gear is so close to that outer edge of the housing or the snowblower basically there's so much snow that's getting in there there's a lot of moisture and unfortunately these roller bearings just dried up we've also got some new Collard bearings in so we ordered those from stenz and got two of those to replace the two bearings that needed to be replaced anyways and we went ahead and cleaned up our gear here so now our gear spins freely so essentially we're gonna do the same thing that we did for this one on the top axle so once you get all your Clips removed off of this axle you can go ahead and start to pull the axle that way just again be mindful that that key is going to drop now if you're having a hard time getting the gear off of the shaft because there might be a little bit of rust built up what you can do is get yourself a little soft blow hammer such as this put your hand behind the gear like this and then go on the other side of the axle and give it a tap keep tapping it and you should get it to the point where the key comes right out just like that and remember the only reason we're doing this even though this gear still spins chances are that the grease that they used from the factory has you know started to wear out and started to push out of those roller bearings and I don't want the same problem that happened with the lower one to happen on the upper gear as well so for the time it takes me to pull this axle out and then grease this and then put it back together since everything's apart already it's a lot easier to do it now versus me having to do all of this work put it all back together only to have the same issue happen next year on let's say this upper gear and then have to do it all over again so again if you're taking it apart go ahead and just do it anyways here it starts to bind up on all that rust that's built up on the shaft so unfortunately what I'm gonna have to do is take a wire wheel in here just to clean that up so what I've done here is just move the gears over to the left side because there's no rust you guys can see on that left side but there is a lot of rust on the right side okay so even after cleaning that side it's just too pitted to get this year off so I've gone ahead and taken the wire wheel to this side so hopefully now I shouldn't be able to slide this off with ease and this side is proving to be a little easier than the other side was so that's it that's all we need to take off so I can kind of push that back in for now just to hold it in place but this is the gear that we wanted to get off and these are the bearings in here that we're gonna lubricate properly because I can tell there's hardly anything in there and this is a very dirty job by the way so prepare to get greasy so we're just over here at the workbench and this is what I wanted to show you guys so you see all those nasty bits of grease in there and dirt and rust so your roller bearings are those cylindrical pieces and then there's all sorts of stuff built up inside there we're gonna get all that out because we want to clean this up so over the years of this thing moving it's picked up little bits of dirt and grease and rust and it's all been packed inside of there a little bit of brake cleaner we're gonna shoot in there clean it up and I'll show you what it looks like once it's clean so here's what it looks like after a little bit of brake cleaners been shot through it you guys can see world of difference here's the other side too we got a couple little hairs from the rag that I was putting through there so I'm gonna just clean that up a bit so here's a before and then here's an after you guys can see a huge difference and I'm gonna be using some motor master wheel bearing grease because it's specifically designed for roller bearings now this stuff is a little thicker so you don't want to be using just like an oil because you want the grease to stay into these roller bearings you don't want it to come out that's why I'm using roller bearings specific grease so now after I've laid it in there thick I'm gonna take my finger in there and work it into all the rollers or you could go ahead and get yourself a little q-tip if you don't want to get that greasy and go ahead and work that grease into every single little roller that's in there and then I'll show you what it should look like once we're done so it should look a little something like this when you're done you want to have a nice coating of grease over top of each one of those rollers and you shouldn't have any problems in the near future okay now we're gonna go ahead and slide our gear back on to our shaft don't forget that it goes gear washer gear then washer washer and then your little end bushing just want to make sure you don't forget any of those washers so now you should be ready to put all that back together just like that and now is an excellent time to go ahead and just clean out your keyway make sure there's no burrs on the top of it you know sometimes you can get a little burr and it makes the gear going over it a little bit trickier so you know take a file to the top of that clean out the inside of that key way and then we'll go ahead and clean up the shaft one last time to make sure that it's a nice and smooth and then when we're ready to put everything back together we'll go ahead and grease the entire shaft to make sure that corrosion and rust like we've seen here doesn't happen again so I've gone ahead and greased this side of the shaft as well as fit in the key and made sure that there was no binding there I've got this side greased so now I'm just gonna go in here get a little bit on my fingers here put it all over the shaft here so that the gear can slide over nicely now you're gonna have to take your key out because it we have to pass this little washer in here so I've done that and I'm gonna slide the shaft and the key way spot past where the key goes then we're gonna come in here and we're gonna drop the key in okay and once you get your key in you guys can see it there just make sure everything's lined up now is a good time to take your bushing so that you can slide it over and get that lined up so that it just kind of situates the axle and then you can go ahead and start putting your earrings back into place and again you want to make sure that you had that washer on this side of the key way because that rests up against the back of this bushing here so again you have your bushing washer your gear washer your gear another washer another washer and then your bushing at the other side and the bushing on this side that goes in that way whereas the bushing on this side goes in this way so once you have your gear keyed onto the shaft and you have all your washers and bushings in the proper spot you want to go ahead and make sure that your axle is lined up to the point where that little groove is and that's for your earring so that'll let you know that you have equal length on both sides of your machine and I find the best way to put these in is you hold the outer sides and then just give them a tap with a little hammer and make sure that they're on that shaft and that they're not going anywhere and now we know that our gear isn't going to come off the key as long as our axle stays as far to the right as possible okay and same thing for this side go ahead and make sure your bushing is in and your washer is there and then go ahead and line up your earring with the little groove I'd do the same thing pop that on okay now here's the thing that I'm gonna have to show you guys so we can see on the left side here that our bushing is all the way pushed in flush and it's sticking out a little on the outside and if we come over to the right side you guys can see that it's sticking out a bit now if you stick that bushing in flush that's actually gonna kick your gears and your axle over to the point where you're not going to be able to fit your earring on to that groove on this machine it's meant to stick out like that I don't know why but it just is but now would be a good time to go ahead and take your spacers and just slide them on to the shaft on either side of the machine and then follow that up with your washers the top axle is now done it's taken care of okay so here's our lower driveshaft I've got our gear back on there and I've gone ahead and packed it full of bearing grease so now when you spin this you guys can see it spins it doesn't spin as fast and that's because there's grease packed in there so it's actually got a little bit of lubricant in there that's causing it to get a little sticky so it doesn't spin as fast whereas before you know you'd be able to spin it and it would keep spinning and it would have a slight wobble to it it's because there was nothing in there and originally you couldn't even turn it a quarter of an inch in either direction so now our problem is solved so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to slide this gear off so that we just have our shaft and our little gear here what I'm going to do is same way we took it off I'm gonna take that gear off we're gonna come in at an angle then I'm gonna get it to the point where the shaft is right about here I'm gonna line up our gear inside of here make sure that it's seated into position and then we're gonna go ahead and slide our shaft through and then we'll get both our bearings installed at the ends so I'm just gonna take this off and we're just gonna put that out of the way just for now and we're gonna have to go in here on an angle and we're gonna go right in here just like this so now comes a good point where you're gonna want to hook up your shifter so go ahead and give this a little pull and just seat that into there and then now we can go ahead and pull our axle through just like this line up our gear inside of here and again you want to just give it a roll just like that to make sure that the gears and the teeth are seated and then just go ahead and push your axle through we can go ahead and get our bearings on on either end and then that'll lift up our axle enough to the point where this won't move around as much okay so I got our bearings here now just remember that I might never have to work on this machine ever again but someone else might have to so when we're going to put these bearings on grab yourself a little bit of grease put it in there roll it around and that will ensure that these bearings never cease to that shaft just kind of roll it around until you get your bearing on this end flush with that little groove and we'll go and put an e ring on it just to hold it into place now on this side you don't want to go in there with the hammer and tap it in like that so I'm just going to take a pair of pliers here and just give it a little squeeze spin it around make sure that it's seated into position and now we know that our axle can't go that way anymore because it's got the e ring in it and just to clarify the earrings for the lower axle here are actually smaller than the ones for the upper axle so just keep that in mind when you're going to put them on okay same thing for this side make sure there's some grease in there lift up your gear you may have to give it a little roll just to make sure that everything is seated because you can see we're a little so that means our gear teeth aren't lined up so what I'm gonna do is just give it a roll just like that until now we're lined up and we should be able to pop that right in just like that and then again a little bit of grease on your earring same technique with our plier here we're just gonna fit that on hold that in place and then give it a little squeeze down and that's it our axles are now done and we're gonna put our tires back on just make sure there's some proper lubrication there and that will ensure that your tires don't seize to the axle because if you can't get your tires off you can't get any of this off okay so now I'm gonna put our tire back on you just want to give that a spin until it seats up against your spacer same thing with the tire on this side make sure you're lined up and then just give it a spin until it locks in and now our tires are on so now we can go ahead and bolt those up and then we still have an e ring to put in because again this gear hasn't been pinned yet and I'm just gonna get this last earring into position here and that's installed so now comes the moment of truth we get to look at the fruits of our labor we can see that our axle spins freely as it should so again what we're gonna do now is go ahead and grease both shafts I'm going to take some lithium grease to these gears if you use more of a grease what you'll find is when the years mesh with each other you'll find that the grease will become stringy and some of that can get back on to your disc at the bottom there which you don't want so again we're gonna grease everything then we're going to make sure that our shifter linkage works properly and then once everything's greased then we'll go ahead and take some oil and grease remover to our disk here we can go ahead and put our panel back on and then the repair job is complete now before we go any further I also wanted to note that now is a good time to check your drive lever because when you spin this you want this to spin freely without your friction wheel touching that disk at the bottom and then when you engage your drive on your lever on your handle you shouldn't be able to spin this at all so if we're spinning this and engage it it stops it from spinning that means that the proper tension is on our cable here if you have not enough tension what will happen is this rubber friction disc will only slightly engage your aluminum disk down here and it'll actually wear it out if you have it too tight you can end up snapping this spring at the bottom here or you can snap the cable at the top so again now is the perfect time to go ahead and check that and we can see that we do in fact have the proper amount of tension now to greased the shaft I got a little bit of low temperature grease in a mini grease gun here and you just take some grease you get some grease built up onto your finger now this stuff is super sticky and kind of tacky so it's not gonna get stringy and it's not gonna drip down onto our disk down here now what you want to do is just take your finger with a little bit of grease spread it on to that shaft and then roll your tire backwards and then just move your finger back from left to right and kind of coat that axle and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna go up top we're going to shift our shifter over and then we're gonna grease this side where the friction wheel is currently hiding so now that we've got it shifted into reverse same process go ahead and grease this up same thing can be done with this upper shaft here again you just want to lubricate that you don't have to worry about anything sliding across this shaft if anyone else has to work on this machine or do any kind of maintenance in the bottom end here and they have to slide a gear off instead of running into the problem that we did where the shaft was all pitted now it should be protected with a nice fine layer of grease so now is a good time to come up to the front of your machine and shift it from reverse in to forward make sure that it goes left and right nice and smooth which we can see it does so now we can move on to decreasing that disc and to do that I'll be using some refinisher select it's a silicon and wax and grease remover so I'm going to put a little bit of this on a rag and we're wipe it down clean that up now before we decrease that I'm going to be using a scotch pad and basically this is gritty enough that it'll just take some of the rubber that's built up on this disc off so you just want to go in there just kind of rough it up but we can see that already it's starting to clean that up and move your shifter to the other side clean that disk up real nice and then we'll go ahead and hit it with some oil and grease remover and this stuff I don't know you should probably be wearing gloves because anytime I use it it always makes your fingers go white because it literally sucks all the oil and grease that's on your fingers it is pretty powerful but it does a wicked job you guys can see right there so that's a clear indication of how much stuff was built up on that and that's it we are now ready to put our access panel back on now there's four bolts on this model so before I put them on I'm going to be using some Permatex nickel a nice ease on those four bolts because they are known to seize and the reason for that should be quite obvious the access panel is down here on the bottom and the bolts are going into these four holes here and any snow that gets inside of the transmission housing at the back here when it melts it all drips down to the bottom access panel so again a little bit of nickel anti-seize on all of our bolts and they should come out easy the next time they have to come off and here's proof of that you guys can see that's all dirt and water and nasty stuff so I'm gonna go in here and clean that out with a bristle brush before I put that on and to clean that up I'm just gonna be using a little bit of spray 9 we're gonna spray it on there take it off with a bristle brush should come out nice and clean so a little bit of degreaser that thing's good as new now you might say why did I clean that and the answer is simple one just looks a little better but two if I ever remove this next year the year after for inspection when I do an oil change on his equipment and I noticed some metal shavings or possibly some oil buildup it gives you a good indication of how the machine is doing because you have to remember that a lot of people aren't going to check their own oil that's why a lot of my customers rely on illuminator performance to do oil changes and I just do a general inspection of their machine and you'll be able to diagnose issues that you may or may not have just by looking at the inside of that access panel now before I flip this machine down to put some oil into it I'm gonna be shining up the tires if you want to see how I shine up my tires you can check out that video on the top right of your screen right now so if you follow the steps in that video you'll be able to get your tires looking fresh again so after all of that we now have a snowblower that moves forward and back and that's it our repair job on this snowblower is now complete we got some fresh 5w30 oil in this thing too so now it's ready to be returned back to our customer so if you guys enjoyed the video think about leaving me a thumbs up you know it really helps me out you can click here to subscribe and you can click over here to watch one of my previous videos I upload every single week so be sure to come on back next week and check out what we got new on the channel and as always guys thanks for watching [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Eliminator Performance

Views: 350,100

Keywords: MTD, Snowblower, won't move, MTD Drive Repair Kit, 75305173A, seized axle, Yard Machines, 941-0563, 917-04026A, Eliminator Performance, 31AE6FHF552

Id: O03ME2Tca2A

Length: 32min 58sec (1978 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 18 2018