I learned something today.
I should have skipped clearing snow last night and waited until after it stopped. This morning, instead of frozen crust over fluff, I had to hammer away at frozen crust. Plus the plow refilling my driveway apron.
After I redid the house I headed in to the shop and chipped my way into the building and got the 196? REO fired up. The REO is in rough shape because, like a lot of ancillary equipment at a business it suffers from two things. Being rode hard and put away wet, and,... let's call it "priority slip."
Much like boats over the winter when you should really replace that tired bilge pump, the snowblower suffers from a lack of focus when there's paying work to be done, and winter seems like it's half a year away. It does have a fresh set of belts tho. So I'll take that point against the perception of total neglect.
Anyway, there were a few minor issues. The worst was the muffler falling off. Without overtelling the story, the muffler has always been a problem. Whatever genius decided an iron pipe elbow in an aluminum threaded port was acceptable doesn't want to hear from me. I Band-Aided it, with a piece of straight pipe, but if anyone has a 3/4" pipe tap that they could loan....
Here's what it all looks like when it's done.
Vintage snow removal equipment and all.
Way too late to make my way to Suffolk. So, if I can still move tomorrow I'll go tackle the last job.
If you think the vintage REO is interesting I'll start a contest to guess the snowblower I'll be using tomorrow.
If it starts.
Hint: I know the year of that one. 1965.
