Snow and Ice and belts are a bad combination. Also replacing belts would then require removing the auger and drive shaft, not fun in a blizzard. More heavy duty blowers have a enclosed oil bath chain to drive the augers. The other reason for a shear bolt instead of a slip clutch is that the auger does not take a lot of power so it would be possible that if you hit something then the auger would stop and the belts or slip clutch would be wrecked before you notice. I have never ever seen belts driving a snowblower auger and I have seen quite a few blowers. Every one of them has a chain and shear bolt except a few with a old differential in the middle in front of the fan. If a shear bolt system is set right if will only break when you hit some thing and all it requires for maintenance is chain tension and greasing.
/ snow blowers, shear bolts and alternative auger drives.
1. Loss of adhesion from slippage due to moisture and 2. heat build up.
If your going to do anything and you own a minimat lathe with all the doodads you can simplify things
by just making the impeller/cross auger chain driven by replacing the V belt pulley with a sprocket machined and welded to the same diameter shaft to run the snow caster, the problem then becomes how to transmit power to the smaller drive sprocket.
The International Harvester Company, Wheel Horse and others solved that with the insanely simple right angle bevel gearbox powered by the V belt coming off the snubber pulley used to tension the V belt that powered their single stage snow thrower using the horizontal crank 12 horsepower Kohler engines.
Since the insanity of the vertical shaft engines came along and well built garden tractors like the wheel horse 525 or the wheel horses with the renault engines using snubber pulleys with short V belts are a thing of the past the MTD and RAD mowers and snwo casters are what we are stuck with.
Your going to have to do a lot of welding and fabrication to make your garden tractor simple again.
/ snow blowers, shear bolts and alternative auger drives.
Actually, I was thinking of a two belt system OUTBOARD of the auger and the snow box. Belt changes would be as easy as changing belts on a mower deck. Snow is soft and the snow box has short "wings" that would minimize rubbing of the belt cover against the unmoved snow cut.
Heat? In the winter? Haa! No problems there. ' Just to point out, the PTO drive on the Bolens HT23 is a three row belt with a simple tension pulley. I've run the same belts for over 25 years ;-)
/ snow blowers, shear bolts and alternative auger drives.
International Harvester Company and Wheel horse and I believe Bolens had extremely simple dump drive systems where
in the short V belt coming from the horizontal crank pulley which used a snubber pulley on an arm with a spring under tension to create the tension on the flat side of the single V belt used to power the single stage snow blowers.
The single V-belt was long enough that it went to a second pulley mounted on the right angle bevel gearbox that then delivered power to a cross shaft that connected to the drive sprocket that was the same diameter of the driven sprocket on the snow blower rotor.
If I had the ability to do it I would certainly make a lawn tractor or convert the ones that use the vertical crank shaft engines to an engine with a horizontal crank like the new twin cylinder Yamaha or the single cylinder Yamaha engines.
The older wheel horses had a beautiful simple easy to use and maintain belt drive system for their mower decks that had a manual tension pulley that was outboard of the engine on the right side that was routed to the front and under the tractor to power the mower deck.
I wish I had bough that single stage snow blower for my wheel horse 244 lawn tractor in the beginning instead of the plow which was a huge mistake.
The larger water cooled wheel horses used a V belt coming off the crank on the Renault engines that then were connected to a second manually tensioned pulley that was connected to a propeller shaft that was connected to the gearbox that powered the mower deck.
Its a real shame that they have gotten away from good engineering and design to a less costly more aggravating V belt driven mess that has to deal with greater shock loading and power loss and V belt expense.
