Seized Simplicity Snow Blower - Will It Run Again?

hey guys welcome back so today I'm working on the Simplicity snowblower this one was given to the channel by a local subscriber named Michael he was the original owner and from looking at it I'd say he took good care of this it's very clean and fairly rust free you know for a 12 year old machine it does not look like it has seen a ton of use anyway this has a problem and it has to do with the engine it is locked up solid so yeah I'm not exactly sure what led to this you know he said it was in storage for the summer he took it out recently and tried to start it and it did start but it was running rough there were Flames coming out of the exhaust and a mouse running for his life so Michael already took apart some stuff cleaned out the nest but I think I'm going to keep going taking this apart to see why this engine doesn't spin because it did run at least for a bit so I don't know if it ran out of oil or maybe something related to that Mouse but that's what we're going to find out so let me set up a little bit better and get going on this we'll start with the obvious we'll check the oil make sure it didn't run out yeah plenty of oil it's filled right to the top and it looks nice and clean so I would say oil was not the issue here so I'm going to get some of the Plastics off covering the belts and the pulleys make sure nothing is hanging things up there probably get the tank off and the blower housing to gain access to the flywheel and see if that sheds any light as to what's going on here okay let's start by getting the tank out of the way so I need to disconnect this fuel line from the carburetor and there's a few bolts going around I see two here most likely that control knob has to come off there's a bolt right there and a couple around the corner here actually before pulling things apart I'm going to get the spark plug out you know potentially the engine's hydrolocked that happens when the needle doesn't seat and fuel is just allowed to flow into the cylinder area preventing the engine from moving so yeah let's just double check that plug looks fine but dry so I don't think it's Hydro locked but let's just pull it over and make sure nope foreign [Music] foreign to see something obvious in here but I do see the date code and it looks like 0408 15. so actually older than I thought this one is 18 years old but now we have access to the crank and I was hoping I could rotate it the opposite way but that is really locked solid it is not budging the belts are not tight so yeah I said we get the blower housing off and try that side so to get this off there's just two bolts near the bottom and one on the top right there on the blower housing but the carburetor I think is in the way so we'll get that off first all right [Music] thank you it moves just a bit and that's it you know I was hoping the starter maybe was somehow hung up but that is not the case and it looks like the coil is not the issue either so that doesn't really leave a whole lot and I do hear a little clunk coming over with a cylinder and piston are so yeah it's not looking too good let's get the valve cover off next nothing obvious both valves have clearance and they are both closed so it's either in the compression stroke or the combustion stroke and the magnet is passed the ignition coil so from here about halfway around is the completion of the combustion stroke so it's almost at the bottom of its travel the Piston so I think I'm going to put some oil in there maybe I'll spray some PB Blaster in there or some WD-40 and try to turn it counterclockwise see if I can get the Piston to go back up [Music] all right [Music] oh I don't know if you can hear that it is moving it's backing the engine up but I hear a lot of scraping in there but I don't think we have any choice I'm going to keep going I'm guessing maybe a broken ring I'm not sure actually I think the scraping is just the coil you can see the scratch marks right there on the flywheel so I'm going to loosen these bolts just pull the coil back all the way and see what kind of difference that makes yeah still not great actually I think that noise is just the belt yeah no more scraping but we do have a hard stop see where is the magnet I think it's straight down so let's rotate it forwards magnets at the top and now it's stuck so we're getting about three quarters of a turn the Piston's actually at the top right about here so it's getting stuck seems like on the bottom but I don't see the valves moving at all so I wonder if we got a stuck valve let's see let's try the intake not stuck and not stuck so let's keep spinning it huh just made it all the way around I was about to put a wrench on here again I do see the valves opening and closing not sure what to think about this one do we have compression yes we do I can feel it so this actually should run but before I put it together I am going to spin this with the drill just splash the oil all around try to get the junk scraped off the cylinder if there indeed was any and then we should put it together at least enough to see if it runs so let's set the gap does she use a business card between the ignition coil and the magnet foreign bolts and that's the wrong size loosen up the coil the magnet will just pull it in and tighten it up not too tight these are very small screws they strip out very easily then just rotate the engine make sure there's no interference and it seems good so I think I'm just going to get the valve cover back on get a little starting fluid or gas in the cylinder and just use the electric start spin the engine over and make sure that it starts and things sound good foreign guys up over by the exhaust in case there's anything exciting flying out got nothing from that engine so maybe we don't have spark or not enough compression try a bit of starting fluid see if that makes any difference and we get nothing so let's check for spark I assume we'd have it because this kill wire is disconnected but it could be grounded out somewhere else so let's turn the engine over see if we have any Spark no spark so maybe the coil is bad maybe the wire is bad let me see if I can unplug this actually might be user error on my part the throttle was turned down there's another kill wire going over here so that may have been grounding it out so let's check again now that I move that throttle up a bit nice we do have spark so let's try this again gonna be lazy use a bit of starting fluid so we've got Spark I felt compression it should be doing something so I'm wondering now if we have a timing issue I probably should have kept the valve cover off but it's really the only way to know for sure so let's take the cover back off the plug came out kind of wet so I might have just flooded the engine but to double check timing of the valves and Spark I'm just going to rotate the engine we'll watch the intake valve it should open that's the intake stroke and then once it's closed the Piston's at the bottom and it should be traveling up to the top so let's see if we can see that so right about there it's at the top and when it's in that position if the spark timing is right the magnet should just be clearing the coil which it is so it looks like the valve timing and the spark timing are good I'm thinking I just flooded the engine so yeah let me dry that we'll try this again okay [Applause] yeah we lost spark again so I'm going to unplug the wires going to the coil see if that brings it back foreign okay we're disconnected so it seems like we have a bad coil right now the kill wire is completely disconnected from the coil and I'm getting no spark so I do have some coils for 10 horse and nine horse Briggs I think this is an eight horse it might fit I'm not sure let me try it out we are so close we just need spark and that was not even the problem we were troubleshooting we had it for a second it's gone after disconnecting the kill wire it's still gone and I just re-gapped the coil just to make sure and that made no difference there is no spark in the extra coil I have doesn't work on this engine the mounting locations are not correct so I do need to order a new coil and I would say a new wire as well this one is bare in spots due to the mouse infestation and most likely the failure of this coil is a result of that little critter it's been a couple days and the new ignition coil came in today so I'm going to get this one off and we'll put the new one on the new one it is a clone coil from Amazon it was only 18 dollars it's tempted to go OEM they're about sixty dollars but the shipping would have taken about a week so we'll give the Amazon ignition coil a try and I'm going to plug this kill wire back in because assuming this works I want to clean the carburetor and get this running a little bit longer under its own power I did order a new wire but it's going to be probably another week before I see it thank you absolutely nothing from that new coil so maybe I should unplug this kill wire and try it again and yes the magnet is still magnetic let's try it again finally we got Spark so yeah that wire was bad and the coil was bad so let's get some fuel down the cylinder and try to start it again thank you finally we get to hear this engine run and it sounds good so I think the next move here is to get the carburetor cleaned up it's actually been over a year since this engine locked up and I'm sure that carburetor has a bunch of junk in it at this point so we get it cleaned up bolt it on run it a bit longer under its own power and just test everything out make sure everything else is good and that the only thing that we really need is this wire which is going to hold up reassembly but there's no reason why we can't get that carb cleaned and put back on the machine all right let's see what this carb looks like it's a good sign at least the bolt is loose but it is full of old fuel so let me catch some of that yeah definitely smells like varnish not too bad though there's really no corrosion a little bit of debris foreign that's it there's really nothing to this carb the bowl nut is the main jet so we'll go through that make sure it's clear just make sure these passages here are clear and this one I might spray a little bit with carb cleaner actually maybe not because this does have a rubber seat in here and if I get any carb cleaner on it it might swell it up and the other concern is too the Degreaser I use the Harbor Freight Degreaser and the ultrasonic tends to actually Shrink rubber a bit so that could cause an issue with that seat as well but I don't think we have a choice but to give it a bath because it is pretty dirty Main Jet was not clogged so it probably would have run assuming that fuel was still flammable that's it getting there I'd say another five minutes the bowl cleaned up real well and the carburetor yeah not so much the outside does have a lot of corrosion on it so no doubt that was due to the mouse but the inside is pretty clean so I think it'll run okay anyway what I think happened to this machine based on the description Michael said with the Flames coming out of the exhaust it running rough and a mouse running for his life I would say that a mouse Nest must have been right up against the screen for the carburetor you know snow blowers do not have an air filter and even though the screen would have kept big pieces out I think fine dust or sediment from that Mouse Nest got sucked into the engine and that's what the Flames were coming out it was just little bits of the nest on fire and when he saw the mouse running for his life Michael shut the machine down evicted the mouse and we went to go restart it the engine was stuck and most likely little bits were just kind of wedged between the piston and the cylinder so yeah not great but I think this one's going to survive so let's get this back together let's try it out missing the spacer foreign it's going to help the top end out a bit and use a little bit of two-stroke fuel and there's supposed to be a primer right there I'm not sure if that's going to create a vacuum leak so we'll try it without it and if it's running real lean we'll add a primer bulb to plug that leak huh and we're flooding there we go [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] kind of surprised me but the carb it's running the engine really well and everything seems to work the auger engaged we got forward and backward and the light even came on anyway I had to shut it down because I don't have the front tin on so without that there is no cooling over the head but I've seen enough I mean I think we're ready to put this thing together once we get a replacement wire you know this one I rigged up just temporarily so I could shut the engine down in case something went wrong but yeah yeah not too bad I was just going through the rest of the parts that Michael included with the machine and I noticed it Briggs part here that says wire stop and that is the part I need that is the kill wire so cool let's get that installed I'm going to cut this one back and just tape the new wire to the old one and hopefully it just pulls right through to where it needs to be it's interesting the old one is copper new ones aluminum before I close this up I want to check it real quick and make sure that the wire and the switch are working properly so I've got the multimeter set to measure continuity and when the leads touch we get a beep so right now this lead is connected just to engine ground and the other one I'm going to put on the end of the new wire right now the switch is open so there should not be a connection which there's not and if we Slide the switch to turn the engine off that's when the connection is made so the new wire and the old switch seem to be working just fine I've got the new kill wire plugged into the ignition coil so I want to get the blower housing on next but before I can do that I think I do need to at least remove the bolts for the carburetor to kind of move it out of the way to allow the blower housing to go on [Music] I decided to pop the valve cover off and check the valve clearance because when this is all back together this piece kind of goes around the valve cover and checking the valves won't be as easy as they are right now and when the engine was running I did hear a bit of a ticking which can indicate the valves are a bit loose so on this engine it should be five thousands plus or minus a thousandth right now I'm just a bit past top dead center on the compression stroke and that's important you don't want to be top dead center on the exhaust stroke because you won't get an accurate read in this case the intake's at 6000 switch it's on the high side of okay but I'd rather have it on the high side so I'm going to leave that alone exhaust 5000s fits six fits let's try a seven seven fits and eight also fits so I'm going to leave the intake alone but the clearance on that exhaust has to be decreased so these are a little different than most I think I want to go counterclockwise to get this center pin to come out and that allows me to turn this down more taking away clearance so let me do that a few times make sure I'm doing this the right way yeah and now there's basically zero clearance so I need to turn that Center one in a bit a little bit more check that bit of drag on the five a lot of drag on the six so I think that's it let's just double check make sure the seven does not fit yeah the seven does not fit so I think that's good right kind of between a five and a six so that should be fine though the tank appears to be in pretty good shape there is one issue and that's with the fuel line on first appearance it looks good but if you look over on the other side you can see the Critter nibbled away at it I don't think there's actually a hole in it yet but it is extremely thin and should not be reused now this line it is a special formed line to kind of fit in that tight space so instead of just using a straight line that you buy at a auto store I picked up a new part which is the exact replacement so let's get that installed and this other short piece is actually in good shape so that does not need to be replaced foreign before I get that fuel tank installed I need to correct an issue with this insulator I'm sure some of you guys noticed I put it on incorrectly the insulator it is just a piece of plastic that goes between the engine and the carburetor and the sole purpose of it is to provide insulation between the HUD engine and the carburetor so that the carb is less likely to suffer from vapor lock this one is actually keyed you can just see it right there it's a little raised Notch so you cannot put it on backwards but this one you can put it on backwards because I did and I'm not sure if it's going to make an issue as far as its ability to run correctly but I do want to switch it around to make it a hundred percent this is what the insulator looks like on this engine you can see both sides they are not the same this side has a portion that extends beyond the insulator and I had assumed if I had installed it like this that this piece May interfere with the throttle plate but after double checking the parts diagram and my video I can tell that it should have been installed this way instead of the way I originally did it which was that way most carbs on engines between 5 and about 15 horsepower I torque down between 60 and 80 inch pounds if I don't have an exact spec and I tend to favor going on the light side it's always easier to tighten it up instead of stripping it out foreign not much left now we just got to get the air filter on and this cover that goes right here so I guess the first issue is this bracket right here it's supposed to hold this outer cover on and it's pretty mangled up so instead of trying to straighten that out ended up just buying a new one we're in the home stretch here this only the cover that goes right there but before I can put that on I did notice an issue there are two bolts that hold that cover on right there and two right there this one is broken off so I'm going to grind that smooth we'll try to drill it out and put some new threads on it oh [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] to get this installed it's really just connecting this switch here which I don't think a lot of people use this is the key switch and we also have the primer connection to make like that and then try to maneuver this in place bolt it up foreign ly these skid shoes they are worn out and when this happens it starts dragging the actual snow blower on the ground starts wearing that out so at a minimum this should be reversed it is double-sided but I did Splurge a bit and just got a new set of shoes from Sten so I'm gonna get those on they do need to be adjusted but I'll do that once it's on the ground foreign [Music] foreign I did end up setting the gap on the lift table I think it's going to be close enough if you look down here you can see there is a gap all the way across and the idea is you don't want any part of the snow blower touching the ground except the sacrificial skid plates and the wheels you know the size of the Gap really depends on the type of surface you're working on in my case it's a driveway so the Gap can be pretty tight but if you're working on a dirt road or a gravel road you do want to increase that a bit so you don't suck up anything that shouldn't go through that snow blower so anyway I don't have any snow at the moment so I'm going to pause it right now and with any luck we'll get some snow [Applause] so we got a good four or five inches of snow should be a good test for this machine now that said I am actually expecting issues not with the engine but with the auger when the storm started last night I started this engine just to make sure things were good I engaged the auger and absolutely nothing happened so I pulled this cover off took a closer look at the belt and found it was all stretched out and the belt tensioner there is an adjustment on it to take up some of the slack it was fully adjusted though so there was nothing I could do to take some of that slack out I just need a new belt so temporarily I increased the tension on the cable and we have engagement out of the auger it's not great though it is still slipping so I'm questioning whether it can plow my driveway hopefully it can because this is the only snow blower I have at the moment so let's give it a try thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] looks like I picked up a stick and it broke the sheer pin on this side so I do have extra shear pins I'm not sure if any will fit this machine so yeah let's get that stick out and get this thing going again although I have two extra bags of shear pins none of them fit this snow blower so I'm gonna have to do the wrong thing and just use a regular pin to get this back up and going for now oh good came right out foreign [Music] foreign so it took a little longer than expected but the job is done the driveway is cleared so I think we have a short list of things we need to do to this we need a new belt we need some new shear pins and I think we need a new bearing on the auger input shaft I did hear some noise and a bit of vibration so most likely that is going out so I'm going to order those things I'm going to pause it here and I'll turn it back on in a second going to start just by pulling off this cover for the belts because I'm not sure how to split this snow blower usually there's three bolts on either side right here and this one doesn't have it all I see is a bolt there a bolt on the other side in the same spot and that's it so I'm hoping the rest are easy to get to on the inside so that was not a bolt it actually just looks to be a support for the pivot here for the tensioner but there is a nut right there and there's another one on the other side and I can't see it but I'm thinking actually I can see it there's another nut on the bottom and I'm sure it's like that on both sides so I think what I'm going to have to do here is get the bottom pan off remove the two bottom nuts and then put this back on the ground like this remove the top two ones and this should come apart so before tipping this up I am going to loosen this pulley on the tensioner slide it out of the way we'll also get this guide out of the way and that way we can get the belt off without any interference foreign [Music] foreign [Music] not sure who the engineer is that came up with this design but I'm not liking it if they had put the bolts on the outside this would have been really easy and to make matters worse that one is completely inaccessible and it's also serving as a belt guide and there was also a spring attached as well so that one is going to be really fun to get back together anyway just one left I think this one would be pretty easy and then this thing should split into um keep going down slowly a little bit more okay and see there's a lot of movement in that bearing so it does need to be replaced so next here we need to get these set screws loose get the pulley off we'll get the bearing retainer out and most likely we have to get the whole auger assembly out to do this right so first things first let's see if that pulley is going to play nice [Music] okay foreign so let's get the bushings off on the side that hold the auger in and actually we got to remove this key and this should just slide right out thank you foreign [Music] for a bad ball bearing it was very crunchy very sloppy it definitely needed to be replaced so thankfully everything came apart just fine so I'm going to take a second and just clean up a bit I've got tools everywhere and this thing's a bit of a mess anyway I do have the new ball bearing and the new belt so once I get this cleaned up we can start putting it back together foreign so this is the new ball bearing here and I'm just going to test fit it before reinstalling the auger and I want it to be a snug fit but not so snug that I'm going to damage it trying to install it and it goes in pretty easily right until there and then it gets hung up and that's due to the rust and pitting that's right there so I'm going to sand that lightly just get it good enough so that it goes on with some resistance but not not too much just a bit more perfect I'm going to be using anti-seize on as many of these bolts as possible when putting it back together foreign much better there's no play and no noise I don't have torque specs on any of this but I am torquing it to get consistent torque all the way around you know in this case I'm going up to 140 inch pounds foreign so I started cleaning up in here and I realized I'm kind of making mistake because oil is a snowblower's friend so I'm going to leave it right there it's going to act as a preservative and I'm just going to get this belt done Instead This is a half inch by 36 inch belt I believe it's kevlar made by true blue and if I remember right goes on something like something like that and then of course it goes on the bottom pulley on the auger which I think we can do once this is on the machine once the two halves are connected at the moment I am a one-man show and getting this back together is a two-person job but my hope is I can use the lift in such a way that I can get these two halves joined back together thank you [Music] foreign foreign so I've got everything bolted up both the halves are secured I've got the belt on I've got all the belt guides on the top side and I was just finishing up the bottom here and I noticed this belt guide actually looked like it broke at some point we're missing about half an inch so if the belt actually makes contact with this it's going to chew up the belt Now My Hope was I could add maybe another washer on the bottom give me a little extra height and then secure that down and I think this will work and there's actually supposed to be a washer on each side here so that gives me a little more height I still wouldn't say it's great and ideally I would order one of these online but nobody seems to have this part so what I'm thinking now is Maybe I just bend this piece up a little bit and then straighten that out and that should give me what I need which is just a flat round Rod right about there so yeah let's try bending this with the Vise and maybe getting a little bit more life out of this yeah maybe a little more foreign about by the same amount yeah let's try that out yeah that's perfect foreign so we're almost done here we just need to calibrate the auger meaning we have to set the cable tension and the belt tensioner tension so that everything works properly so according to the manual this cable should be snug not tight but there shouldn't be any slop in it so I'm just going to tighten up this screw to shorten the cable and get most of that slack out of there without actually engaging belt tensioner so that should be good just tighten up that jam nut and then as a double check we're going to see how long the spring is right now and then we depress the handle and we measure the spring length again it should grow by 5 16 of an inch and if that's off then we need to adjust the belt tensioner until we get 5 16 of an inch foreign so the spring is starting off at 2.17 I'm going to zero that out we'll put this back pull the handle and if we're on we should be point three one two five so that's pretty close but I think we do need to take a little bit of the tension off that belt tensioner so just a tiny bit of tension we need to take off say right about there and we're so close I mean honestly I can't imagine it's going to make a big difference but if the tension is too much what's going to happen is that when you turn the auger off the belt will still be a little too tight and the auger might still move or potentially just wear the belt out all right let's check that all right let's use a more precise tool here we'll get the initial measurement two point one eight five zero that out close enough 0.314 so I think we're good but before I put the cover on the belts I just want to start it and test it I want to make sure with the auger off that nothing is spinning and then I'm going to engage the auger of course the auger spins and then when I let go of the handle the auger should stop within five seconds there is a break on the pulley that drives the auger so if everything's working correctly that's what we should see [Applause] thank you I think that's it seems to be working the way that it should and I guess we'll know for sure when we plow some snow the belt could potentially still slip I don't think it's gonna though almost forgot we need to get this pin out and I ordered a pack of 10 shear pins so although they look the same these are designed to fail when you get something like a stick in here good enough I think this will be a good test for the belt this snow it is basically slush it is full of water and I would say a snow blower's Nemesis they don't do well in this kind of stuff so let's give it a try okay foreign [Music] well guys that's pretty much it I mean this machine is now running well it is a hundred percent and has its work cut out for it you know it has been a struggle getting what I have blown off the driveway because this stuff it's I wouldn't even call it snow it's slush and yeah any snow blower is going to have a problem blowing that anyway I'm going to end the video here I've still got a lot of work to do so I hope this video helps someone thanks for watching [Music] foreign

Channel: James Condon

Views: 223,072

Keywords: Alternator, Anti Seize, Auger Bearing, Auger Belt, Carb Clean, Carburetor, Chewed Wires, Clearance, Critters, Feeler Gauge, Fixed, Flame, Generator, Hertz, How To, How-To, Intek, Kill Wire, Locked Up, Mouse, No Spark, Repair, Seized Engine, Shear Bolt, Shear Pin, Shooting Flames, Simplicity, Slipping Belt, Small Engine, Snow Blower, Snow, Spark Tester, Stuck Engine, Troubleshooting, Valve Adjustment

Id: hDlaXIPo40E

Length: 89min 2sec (5342 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023