On Feb 15, 7:24 am, "Platebanger" wrote:
Hi Folks, It appears that I have a frozen gear box on my snowblower. It
worked great yesterday but I guess the cold weather last night froze the
gear box, So I'm unable to change gears. Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks

Hi

It might not be the gearbox, but the cables.

I don't have a problem with my gearbox cables but with those that
swivel the snow chute. In order to get it to rotate, I have to heat
the cables with a paint stripper gun and then they will operate. Once
I put the snowblower away, they freeze up again.

I originally thought that heating the cables would drive off the
moisture and the problem would disappear, but that haasn't happened.
I'm guessing that using the snowblower produces snow at the opening of
the cables where they attached to the snow chute. The snow probably
melts from engine heat and runs down inside the cables to the lowest
point.

It seems that there is a design fault with this Sears product - and
others with loops in the cables that are below the openings at either
end. There should be some way of coping with this other than having to
heat the cables each time.

A few come to mind:

- put effective seals on the ends of each cable
- put grease fittings on the cables so that they can be filled with
non-freezing grease that would leave no space for melted snow water to
intrude and freeze.