Although it’s only October, you’ve got to start looking at performing a basic maintenance check on your snow blower now. The weather’s still warm, you can spend hours outside in comfort, and it’ll be nice to start off the first snowfall with a ready, well-oiled machine. Doing your snow blower maintenance now also puts time on your side: if you need to replace a part, you don’t have to scramble around looking for it because you have months to order it in. So instead of sitting around, wishing the warm weather will last just a little bit longer than normal, it’s time to break out your snow blower and have a once over at it. And if you’re buying a new snow blower —! Great! We have a stellar sale going on now until October 31st where you can save huge money.
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Check and Replace the Oil and Gas
Without these two liquids, your snow blower isn’t going to run very well, if at all. It needs oil to lubricate the moving parts so there’s no unnecessary friction, and it needs gas to motor it. While everything else on the snow blower can’t exactly or technically be called secondary, they are a bit in terms of importance. If you’ve got a loose bolt or dull blades, your snow blower will still work, albeit not quite at full speed.
Changing the oil is super easy: just let the snow blower run for a few minutes to warm up the oil, turn it off, and then drain the oil into a separate container (making sure to dispose of it safely). After you’ve put the base back on, just fill it up to the line with fresh oil. Gas is even easier, as pretty much all you have to do is fill up the fuel tank. If your snow blower has been sitting around for a while, you may want to run stabilizer through the system or drain out the old gas, but normally, you’re good to go with just filling up the tank.
Add a New Spark Plug
While it’s not mandatory to change the spark plug at the start of every season, you certainly won’t be doing your snow blower any harm if you do. But at the very least, inspect the spark plug for signs of wear and tear. If you’re going to replace it (which we recommend, as spark plugs are a pretty inexpensive piece), then keep these points in mind:
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Are Your Scraper Bars Sharp?
Scraper bars are just what they sound like: they scrape snow off your driveway, sucking it into the snow blower so the augers can spit it out some distance away. But to do a good job, they need to be sharp and the edges can’t be dull or worn away. Scraper bars generally don’t have to be replaced every month, and unless you have a really uneven driveway, you can even get away without replacing them for a few seasons. Once they go, though, it’s time to take them off and put new scraper bars on there.
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Get New Shear Pins
Of all the parts on your snow blower, the shear pins are the only ones designed to break. Why? They act as a safety feature, breaking when the auger and gear case are worked past their limits. When that happens, the shear pins will snap, shutting down the whole snow blower so you can’t use it until suffering a catastrophic accident. However, the last thing you want is to wait until the first snowfall and find out you have an unusable snow blower on your hands. Inspect the shear pins (they’ll be where the gear case and auger meet) for signs of breakage or wear and tear: if that’s the case, take them off and replace with new ones. This is one case where you only want new items in there.
