Snow thrower find

[JF in MI]

I was clearing some snow from the front of one of my buildings today and heard this loud "CLANG" and then a "zing". I stopped with the usual "What the h@ll was that!!?". I found a big 4" long steel chain hook that fell off the bucket of my backhoe when the pin fell out after the cotter pin sheared. I would have preferred to find it in the spring but amazingly it didn't hurt the thrower. Not even a blown shear pin. Got me thinking; What are some of the interesting things your snow thrower has "found"?

 

[Tech 7]

I put an aluminum mailbox, complete with the post through the blower once, while the owner was standing on the snowbank indicating where the mailbox SHOULD be.

 

[Ivan in Mich]

My wife was fond of putting rocks around the sidewalk. These were all softball size. I caught on in the rear blower and it threw it about 75 yards. It it hard enough that it bent one of the paddles in the second stage

 

[Janicholson]

30 feet of a 50 foot 14 gauge extension cord. None really went through, !! Jim

 

[Fordfarmer]

The top 2" of a frozen-down 6x6 block, a deer hide and a cat (those two courtesy of my uncle's dogs), and a cement block.

 

[KenL]

I got to see what happens to one of those blue plastic 2x5ft sleds when it goes through the snow blower. Makes many smaller sleds and unhappy neighbor kids. They left it lay in a bad spot and it snowed enough so you couldn't see it. Sure made a bunch of noise.

 

[JimS]

A neighbor blew a huge pile of snow. I later climbed to the top and found a $20 bill.

 

[Fleeter]

I have thrown a Tonka toy dump truck, a hub cap and taken off a license plate on my wife's car.
I also have taken out my floodlights at the side of my house with gravel

 

[jackbrit3]

My father had a small 5 hp thrower that over the years has thrown his keys with a keyless remote and a another time a usual visor mounted garage door remote. The two of these did not fare well after going through the thrower. Fast forward 13 years and there old 5 hp thrower is now mine. I was getting out of my car from work one afternoon while it was snowing and met a neighbor that had dropped her keys. I said to myself and her I bet I Find your keys but I am not sure how usable they will be when I find them. Well sure enough I found them, could not miss heck this machine eats keys and flippers all the time. I found them when the thrower stopped dead and it was running full throttle. It had a caribeaner made out of aluminum that had jammed up stopping the machine dead. It took me over an hour to get it back to the shed, fire up the torch to melt it out, and put the belt back on. The keys actually took no damage and the keyless entry still worked.

 

[495man]

One of those end of driveway plastic mail boxes that mounts on a 4x4. knew where it was, but could not see ANY of it due to the amount of snow (5 feet banks)

Didn't look too pretty, but I stopped before it ALL went in.

 

[old harv]

I put my open jack knife through it once. I had lost my knife by leaving it on a bale of hay when I was cutting the strings off. I heard the clunk and saw a perfect imprint of my open knife appear in the snowbank. I reached in the snowbank and pulled the knife out. The plastic was gone off the handle but I used it for some time after that, until the next time I left it on a bale.

 

[DoubleR]

I found a 1 1/4 inch wrench with mine a few years back. It broke the wrench in two pieces and sheared a pin on the blower. I was glad it was a cheap Harbor Freight wrench so no real damage was done.

I try to keep an eye out around the barns or buildings where I may be using the blower before the snow flies and keep things picked up the best I can.

 

[Goose]

When we lived in town, a neighbor kid across the street had a big John Deere snow blower (his dad was a John Deere Service Manager) and we had a deal with him that he clear our driveway whenever it needed it.

One time in winter, my wife borrowed a Ford diesel crew cab dually from one of her brothers for something or other. She parked it in the driveway and ran an extension cord out under the garage door to plug the engine heater in. Next morning, she unplugged the heater, let the extension cord lay, and went on her way. During the day, it snowed about 4", and when the neighbor kid got home from school he started blowing snow. He came up our driveway unawares and wrapped the entire 50' extension cord in his blower.

He was not happy. I came home about then, and all we could to was take a pair of dikes and cut the cord into footlong chunks to pull them out. Took us about an hour. I tipped the kid $10.

 

[Bob]

<img src = "http://www.gondtc.com/~blweltin/Bob/SnoBlo.JPG">

Quite a few years ago I "found" a pretty good sized pickup truck tire (no rim) with this one.

It took the tire half-way around and sheared the pin in the drive sprocket.

The tire was jammed in there so tight a couple of use couldn't back up the rotor with chains and crowbars. I wound up torching the four bolts on the pillow block at the RH side so the rotor could spring forward, releasing it's grip on the tire.

 

[Jim in MN]

Back in the early 70's my Grandpa bought a big walk behind blower from Sears. While proudly showing it off to me, he flipped down the lever that engaged the auger. There was a horrible screeching noise and all heck broke loose in the garage. When the auger engaged, it snagged the small metal tackle box Grandpa kept all his finishing nails in. The box eventually wrapped itself around the auger shaft tight enough to kill the engine, but not before the 2nd stage impeller sprayed 4-5 lbs of nails thru the garage and onto the driveway. The repair shop had to cut the box off the auger with a torch. We picked up finish nails in the driveway for years. My young ears learned a few new words too. Haha

 

[MNBeard]

Lawn chair. Snowblower made short work of it.

 

[daisyman]

The visual of that was awesome!!!
Irv

 

[Roger in Wisconsin]

Sunday morning newspaper. It was big

 

[Mark - IN.]

The usual stuff that everyone else does...newspapers, neighbors cat, stuff like that.

It wasn't funny, but looking back, the visual is. One Saturday I'm working and drive one of the fellas that I worked with home, stopped off to have a couple of beers at his house, visit his family before going home. Real snowy Saturday. We're standing in his living room watching the snow come down, and his neighbor across the street is out snow blowing the deep snow. He had emphysema pretty bad and couldn't go anywhere without dragging a bottle of oxygen with him. Well, he had a huge tank in his garage with a hose long enough to get to the street, because he had it hooked up to his face and he was walking behind the big self propelled snow blower, turned, the auger grabbed the hose and ripped the mask off of his face, then pulled the tank over and started dragging it out of the garage towards the snow blower but stalled it out. "Holy crap Tim, did you just see that?". We grabbed our coats and went over and helped him into the house where his young hottie live in health care lady got him onto a portable unit, we dragged the rest of the mess into his garage and told her to call his supplier, then went back across the street and finished our beers before I went home. Tim sent his kid over to finish shoveling.

Mark