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Excessive oil consumption on snowblower


Nick

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The Snowblower is an Ariens. It has a 7HP Tecumseh "Snow King" engine, We bought it new in 1988, and my guess is it has about 35 hours on her. I seem to be using about a 1/4 of a quart of oil, everytime I go to fill the gas tank (We use 5w-30 if that helps) Is it because we are cutting through some of the heavy stuff, like at the end of the driveway, and doing the whole driveway which had 9 inches on it The driveway is 1295 square feet, I do the walkways, and 200 feet along the road. or is my engine just tired. Seems to be using more then it should.
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Pull the fan shrowd and look for debris that little creepy crawlys may have carried in there. It is dark and protected under the shrowd and critters like those kind of places. I have had this happen to me and it will let the engine over heat causing it to use oil[:0]. It will be so hot that you will probably not notice any smoke from the exhaust. If you didn't prep the engine for storage, you could have some rusted rings or cylinder bore:(, of course I am assuming that you have a steel bore. If the power is good the engine is not tired yet. It will get tired in a hurry if it is over heating. Check for mud dauber nest between the cooling fins when you have the shrowd off. Hope it is a simple thing for you to fix.:)
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I just thought of one other thing. Check the head gasket, i.e. the head bolts. Retorque them. I have seen loose head bolts cause a tecumseh and a kohler use excessive amounts of oil.
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quote:
Originally posted by BLT
Where is your oil going, out the exhaust pipe?
As far as I can see, into thin air! No leakage anywhere on the engine, I had it serviced last year, and they changed the oil breather and element. It was leaking all over from that, but not anymore.
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quote:
Originally posted by DaleC
I just thought of one other thing. Check the head gasket, i.e. the head bolts. Retorque them. I have seen loose head bolts cause a tecumseh and a kohler use excessive amounts of oil.
I will be checking both of your hints tonight, It is a cast iron bore. Matter a fact, the whole engine is cast iron, I was quite surprised it wasn't aluminum. I did prep it last year, I put a little oil down the spark plug hole and cranked it over a few times. I'll let you know what I find.
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Are you positive it is all cast iron? I don't think they were using cast iron blocks in 1988. I thought they have been alum since at least the 70's. I could be wrong though. As far as the oil leak here is an odd one we saw about 10 years ago. The snowblower used excessive oil but ran beautifully. After trying all the usual things we pulled the head and found a piston pin clip missing which caused the pin to "machine" a perfect groove in the bore. The unit was about 5-7 years old at the time and they actually covered it under warranty because it was an obvious defect. Pretty good for any manufacturer to cover something that far out of warranty. I would suggest pulling the head if nothing else pans out. All you will be out is a $5 gasket.
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