We are very proud of a snowblower!
It only cost us $200 (plus $16 for a gas can & $4 for springs and hardware!), and with Simon's adjustments has become quite the beast! Simon put a spring on (with a turnbuckle so we can tension it). It is grabbing a ton better now and pulling itself around just fine. Simon decided to get a laugh and try to plow through the snow to access the other woodshed, and it went pretty well (see attached video). It was about a foot and a half deep and has been sitting there for two weeks so it is a mix of heavy and icy.
Meet our snowblower, Wee-Beasty! It is quite the Grandpa Grant-mobile.
Additional spring to improve the drive system (much less slipping of the gears!)
Found this history online about our little guy.
ReplyDeleteYou have a Mid 1960's era AMF / Homko Snowblower. My father bought one of the first ones made around 1963. I know a lot about them and still have the Owner's Manual (but the machine was scrapped long ago). Model # was 13610000
Here is a brief History if you are interested:
AMF Corp (the company that now primarily sell bowling equipment) decided to get in the Lawn and Garden Business in the late 1950's. Ariens and a few other companies had developed a good two stage Snowblower design that worked very well compared to earlier machines. æ»´omko Corp. out of Des Moines, Iowa was primarily selling lawn mowers in the 1950ç—´. AMF Corp bought them up and continued the same name for awhile and plugged some money into the company to develop their own line of snow removal equipment.
For two stage models, there was the AMF æ»´usky" model looked a lot like older Ariens snowblowers and had a 5 HP Tecumseh Engine. The ? stage model was called the æ’¤olar Bear and had a chain drive é›»rift buster auger on top that fed high drifts into the lower auger. These came with an 6 HP Tecumseh and later with a 7 or 8 HP.
Starting in the late 1960ç—´, AMF started making the same machines for Sears and a few other companies. They were painted different colors but were the same basic machine.
AMF made these up until the early 1980;s or so then got out of the business and sold off all the assets to NOMA and then later over to Murray Corp.
Parts for our machine are obsolete long ago but there are still a lot of them out there you will have to hunt around on Ebay or lawnmower scrapyards for parts.