Snowblower tire fixed, the clearing has begun.

The main thing I achieved today was getting the wheel fixed for the snowblower.  Dube's didn't charge me anything for it, all he did was put more bead sealer on it and remount the tire, which was nice.  The snowblower runs significantly better with it. 


Unfortunately it looks like the recoil isn't one of the standardized modular ones.  Those bolt on, this is molded into the metal casing for the engine.


The electric start did work though.  It runs notably worse than last year.  It tries to die when you unload the engine now, which it didn't do last year.  If you keep it loaded it doesn't stall though, so I ran it as hard as it would go.  It was warm and sunny the last couple of days, so it has packed down quite a bit.


Apparently I had some turkeys visit.  They liked the snowshoe trail I made.


They came from the woods over by the creek.  I have seen them nest in there before, though not recently.


It wasn't pleased with my decision to push the banks back to where they should be.  It almost can't throw it high enough to get over the bank.  It has less than a foot of clearance at this point.  Another big snowfall and it is game over.  As it is I had to lift on it to let it float and do it as multiple passes.


I got a few passes up and down before I decided to call it a night, and it ran out of gas.  I will put the mechanic-in-a-bottle stuff in the next batch, hopefully that will help it.  It really liked the stuff last year when I used it. 


The most important thing though: I didn't break a single shear pin.  That is promising.  That means the layer of ice or the tire was the problem.  Both of which will likely be there for the rest of the winter.