Snowblower bow

[MPH 12]

Anyone have a good method of fixing the bow that seems to develop in the center of these old snow blowers? When I put new bearings in a 36 inch last winter I fought with it some with ratchet straps and big hammer but can't really brag about how good it worked out. Wantting to get after my 'new' 42 inch and get it mounted up but would like to get the inch or so bow outta the front edge first. Any success stories I thank you for..

[UCD 14]

16 lb sledge works good. Don't force it get a bigger hammer. To take the bow out of the cutting edge I clamped a piece of 2" x 2" x 1/4" angle to the bottom side heating with gas wrench as I clamped edge to straighten then welded a piece of 1/8" flat stock to inside edge and redrilled bolt holes for cutting edge. To take the bow out of the auger with auger at high speed drove hard into hard packed snow bank as fast as engine could handle with out stalling (easy with diesel) doing this the auger will straighten it self out. This blower had been straightened, reinforced and welded on just about every part of it and still worked good when I found a new replacement for it cheap. There was no repair left to the three before this one. I gave it to Kirk (thedaddycat) for parts.

[MPH 12]

Thanks Maynard. That blower you show makes mine look like it left the factory yesterday.

[Alpha8D 0]

For whatever it's worth I just went through similar situation with the auger on a two stage walk behind. That one had a bent center pipe that got even worse when I straightened the ribbon, (that was the easy part) and rewelded it to it's cross bar. At that point the pipe was still bent and of course would not go back onto the auger inner shaft, (the one driven by the worm gearbox). I took two shorter shafts of slightly smaller diameter and put one in from each end until they met at the bend in the pipe.Then I chained the ends of these to a piece of I-beam and used a scissors jack to force the pipe up away from the I-beam. Dang, I knew I should have taked a picture when I had it set up and the pipe was overbent in the other direction! Also a couple of good whollups with a ball pein hammer while under tension seemed to set the correction. I did this about 3 times, bend and try, bend and try, until I got lucky and had the right correction at the right place. Then when it went together I left well enough alone. Hope this translates.

[john-holcomb 0]

You may want to practice this a little, but if you heat a spot about the size of a silver dollar [old style] red hot on the high side of the pipe and then quench it with water it will shrink the steel and you can straighten an auger very nicely. We do this on industrial screw conveyor augers all the time and it may take one or two times but you can really take out a bow. The larger area you heat the more it shrinks and will move. Like I say you may want to practice on an old pipe first to get the hang of it. Good Luck