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Re: (ET) Dismal failure



Jeremy,

Don't feel bad about the plowing problem. I'm in the southern part of PA near Lancaster. We had snow on Tues, sleet all night Tues & Wed am. My E20 with blade, rubber chains & rear weight platform did fine on Tuesday with the day's snow. Wednesday late morning was an entirely different story - I couldn't even get out of my shop with the plow. Spent several hours with my 2-stage ICE blower (with driven wheels), and it was no picnic at all - lots of slippin' & wrestlin'.

I think anyone with a blade would have had problems with this particular storm. Some of my neighbors have a neigboring Amish farmer use his skid steer to do their driveways and even he was having traction problems.

I guess for me, the ET with blade is a fun snow toy, but if I could only have one mechanical snow device it would be my 2 stage ICE blower - versatile, guaranteed to (eventually) hammer through anything (light, dry or wet & heavy), and compact to store. Maybe I would have done better with the ET & ET blower, but I doubt it. Also, for the number of snows I need to clear (few), I can deal with a bit of 4-cycle air pollution. If I had lots to do, I might try the ET blower - it's just so big to store...

Oh well...I really like using the ET when I can - quietly pushing snow around is fun!

Steve

Alltraxed E20



On Feb 15, 2007, at 8:36 AM, Jeremy Gagliardi com wrote:

Well, I haven't posted in a while, but I feel like it after what I experienced yesterday. Call this an airing out, if you will. Caution, I'm not on my usual
bandwagon.

My tractor is currently only in service in the winter now (it isn't able to handle mowing anymore, since I moved to a hilly, landscaped lot in suburbia). So, here my tractor has been sitting in my garage for well over a year without
use, but plugged in with Landis controller the entire time.

First, the batteries were very discharged. I couldn't even get it up to full speed before the whole thing just quit. Me thinks the controller didn't kick in enough. I had to put it on a "quick" 20-minute manual charge just to get
things going.  After use, I put it on a full manual charge.

But, now here's the really horrible part. I have the dozer blade on for plowing snow. The crossbar is off so the blade can spring up whenever it encounters an obstacle. Guess what happened? This snow wouldn't budge one bit. The blade just kept springing up. Plus, the rear tires (with chains)
would just spin out of control.

I got the dang thing stuck, in 2" deep snow no less, more than 3 times. I had
to get my wife to push while I drove in LL twice.

My wife & I then spent the next hour chiseling a one-shovel width path down the sidewalks to comply with city ordinance. We didn't even feel like getting
to the driveway.  We weren't happy.

To be fair, the snow was hard packed, but on the other hand only 2" deep. Meanwhile, the neighbors ICE snow throwers were handling things just fine. I felt particularly "behind the curve" after that. Kind of like when I splurged $500 for a brand new Newton electric walk behind mower, got everything setup, charged the battery, and...saw how utterly horrible it performed in actual use. It only took me 2 months to ditch the Newton and hire a lawn service.

--
Jeremy Gagliardi
E20
Potomac, Md

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