Parts & Accessories

The parts that fail on a snow blower are the parts designed to fail. Shear pins are meant to snap when the auger hits a rolled newspaper or a chunk of ice, sacrificing a two dollar pin instead of a gearbox. Scraper bars and skid shoes are wear items that are supposed to grind down instead of your auger housing or your driveway. Belts stretch. Friction discs glaze. None of that is a fault, it is the machine working as designed, and it is why a shelf of spares matters more on a snow blower than on almost any other tool you own.

The problem is timing. Things break mid storm, at night, when nothing is open, and a machine down for a week in February is a week of shovelling. Keep shear pins, a spare belt and a scraper bar on hand before winter rather than after the first failure.

This section also covers the things that make the machine easier to live with: drift cutters for banks taller than the intake, chute deflectors and clean out tools, hand warmers and cab kits for the wind, covers and storage gear for the off season, fuel stabiliser and the oil the engine actually specifies. Traction accessories and replacement tyres matter on any driveway with a slope.

Fit is the one thing to get right. Shear pins in particular are not universal: the wrong hardness either snaps constantly or fails to snap at all, which defeats the point of having them. Check the model number on your machine against the listing before ordering, and keep the manual where you can find it. Browse machines in two-stage, single-stage and battery, or read the snow blower buying guides for the maintenance schedule that keeps most of these parts on the shelf instead of in the machine. Fuel is the part most people get wrong: ethanol blended petrol attracts moisture and phase separates over a warm spell, which is what ruins a carburettor. Natural Resources Canada explains what is actually in the fuel you are buying.