Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

Hi,

I am looking for ideas on how to assemble, make-shift an auto rotate chute movement mechanism for our new 621-E. 

Background:

Toro 621-E is a great machine recently bought to replace an old two-stage Ariens that had given good service. The buyer beware caveat being that, because of an ongoing lower back injury and the nature of our property, the chute mechanism direction needs to be moved quite often. That constant motion of stopping, leaning forward to move the chute in a new direction has turned out not to be a good movement for the lower back. The Ariens had an auto chute movement control on the handle so I did not envision the problem that occurs with a manual chute movement of the new 621-E. Getting older and accumlating more aches and pains is a bee-atch. With the dollar spread being some $300+ dollars for a return of the now used 621E and attempts to sell myself (two snowfalls and $559 new) and difference in price of the Toro 621-QZE ($749 new) [wife needs electric for piece of mind], ...

Help sought:

 I am looking for help, ideas, suggestions, resources, etc. to self-assemble, install, jury-rig a mechanism that would control direction movement of the chute. 'Easier' control of the deflector is secondary.

Truly appreciate your feedback.

John

All Toro 621 share the same platform.  Have you considered buying Toro original Quick Chute parts to convert your 621 to a 621QZ?  I'm sure your Toro dealer can help you getting the parts you need.  It should be fairly straightforward to retrofit.   I don't know what the costs of parts will be.

It's just wild speculation, but I'd hazard a guess that buying the Quick Chute parts will be pretty expensive. If you could find a machine with a blown engine that would be ideal. But the odds are probably against you on finding one with a dead engine. Your local dealer might have some used parts they pulled off a machine?

Are there used machines with the Quick Chute near you? That could help soften the hit between selling yours used and buying a new Quick Chute.

Could you sort of compromise and maybe add something like an extended handle to the existing chute rotation/angle controls? Some way to modify them so you don't have to reach over as far?

How about a trade in for something with the controls you want?   It will probably be cheaper than buying parts from a Toro dealership. After all,  any dealer that charges $5.89 for a fifteen cent bolt will want an arm and a leg for the parts you'll need to convert your machine.

You can buy the parts directly from Toro website.  I did a sample ordering and all the parts total to about $150, plus shipping.   That's only for the Quick Chute conversion, not electric start.   You will have to do the retrofit yourself.

It's probably better to buy a gently used 621QZE or a 421QE, and sell your 621E through Craigslist.  

Thank you for all your replies and suggestions. All very good ideas to consider. I do appreciate it.

1.)  The ideas about buying a slightly used 621 QZE and selling my slightly used 621 E continues a focus on the $dollar spread, which I estimate will still be around $300 +/-.

2.)  The suggestion about buying the 621 QZE Quick Chute assembly and retro fit is attractive, but the body of the 621 QZE is physcially different and brings up the unknown issue of what is happening under that 'hood' that is different than the 621 E, plus the actual 621 QZE chute itself is different. I question the unknowns and looking to avoid that and require much more investigation I believe about the feasibility.

3.)  Red Oct's (great book and movie) suggestion about, "Could you sort of compromise and maybe add something like an extended handle to the existing chute rotation/angle controls? Some way to modify them so you don't have to reach over as far?" is most in line with my immediate quest of self-assembly, self-made, jury-rigging something along the "extended handle" concept and the lowest parts cost overall.

It's the 'extended (self-made) handle' that appears to me the most attractive.

Ideas you have or might suggest for exploration along this line of thought? I have everything in-house but a welder.

Thank you.

John

As an example, I have an Ariens SS322 (same body as the SS522). It already has a slightly-"extended" handle, albeit not much. But if you were to stretch the concept further, that might make things easier.

One concern would be that if you make the handle long enough to reach easily, it's going to carve a huge arc as you swing the chute around 180*. You'd have to compromise to make sure the machine could still clear next to something without the handle hitting the garage or whatever, as it hangs off to the side.

If you wanted to get fancy, you might be able to make the handle able to rotate the chute, and also pivot it up & down. If you picture two flat piece of stock (to simplify the discussion) bolted into the sides of the chute at the base, angled up, they could perhaps meet a 3rd piece which went to the up/down handle. You could conceivably make a single handle which you could swivel left/right, and also push up/down to tilt the chute up or down. Not much of an explanation, I know. I can try and make a picture if that would help.

This is what the handle looks like on mine. It only controls left/right, but they at least extended the handle slightly towards the operator. I believe I've seen a pic of a Honda (?) which took the concept a little further, and brought it closer to the user. There are also single stage machines with cranks to aim the chutes. The Ariens SS522 came with a crank, for instance, and it was an option on my SS322. If you only needed to aim the chute, perhaps you could find a different used single stage machine with a chute crank, even if it wasn't the Toro system. I realize that has its $$$ drawbacks, just kind of thinking out loud.

Here's a photo of my Honda HS621 with the handle that Red refered to in the previous post. This might help you to design something similar. It's fairly easy to reach from behind to swing it from one side to the other or to place it in the zero degree position.

Red / Frank,

Great ideas and images. Just like a funnel of ideas pushing down to an exit solution. Again, thanks for the images. Very helpful.

Red, to confirm your description of your idea of, "If you picture two flat piece of stock (to simplify the discussion) bolted into the sides of the chute at the base, angled up, they could perhaps meet a 3rd piece which went to the up/down handle. You could conceivably make a single handle which you could swivel left/right, and also push up/down to tilt the chute up or down." I do believe your suggestion was clear to understand.

Anybody else. This is great information.

Keep 'em comin'. It's winter here in Chicago so I've plenty of inside house or garage time to work on these ideas. Ace Hardware, Menard's and Home Depot are old friends for my handy homeowners projects.

John

Since you're in Chicago area, you may be interested in giving this option a consideration.

A used Toro 221QE on CL, in Chicago western suburbs.  Here's the link.  http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/grd/2805138952.html

The caveat is since we've been having a mild winter, snowblower sales are very very slow, so you may not be able sell your 621E until next winter.

I've made an extended arm for my old toro CCR1000.  Just used a piece of Flat steel bar stock.  1/8 thick one inch to an inch and a quarter wide.  Drilled two holes through it and the current handle on the chute.
Then bolted the steel unto the top of the handle.  I also put an upwards bend in the steel before attaching it.  There is the problem as mentioned with turning the chute 90 degrees and having the handle to long.
It will hit if your trying to go along side a car or house.  So the handle can't be made as long as it would be nice to have it.  But making and installing one is really pretty easy. 
I have also put an extension arm on the chute deflector of my Toro CCR2000 so you don't have to reach so far.  It already has a hand crank chute rotator

Has anyone entertained using a collapsible handle similar to something used on a large fishing landing net?    That way, the length could be adjusted as required.

This is what I was thinking about. Please excuse the crude model, it was just to try and illustrate the concept.

You could grab one location, and swing the chute left/right, and would also be able to aim the deflector up/down. It would be more ergonomic if the two lower bars (for the chute left/right) actually extended beyond where the up/down bar connected. That way you wouldn't be trying to grab the handle right at a weird pivot where 3 things were all coming together. You could simply grab the solid end of a handle.

The design doesn't have much leverage to change the deflector angle, there's effectively about 3" moment arm.  Anyways, the Honda HS621 chute example is the most direct and simple way to do what you're after.  Over a foot long, with a mechanical advantage of at least 6X.  A little more complicated but elegant solution is from this discontinued Lawnboy Insight SS.  Too bad they don't make these anymore.  When Toro bought them out, Lawnboy was the supposed to be premium homeowner brand above Toro.  It was very a promising product line with thoughtful design.  That didn't happen very long.  Here's the picture of the snowblower.

http://www.lawnboy.com/productinfo/snowblowers/34002.html

By the way, you can see a lot of similarities in the chute on this Lawnboy compared to today's 621E.   I don't know why the Lawnboy website is still up.  Perhaps one day there will be new products.  Just hoping....

The easiest way is to add a telescoping tube to the end of the existing handle on the 621E that Borat eluded to.  Just add some dampening or friction to the sliding tubes so it stay in place until you move it.

One of my landing nets has a collapsible handle with a number of holes in the top portion of the handle.  The bottom portion as a small spring loaded button that locks the two pieces together at the desired length. 

For use on a snow blower, the collapsible handle could be spring loaded to  provide tension between the upper and lower parts and a slot  cut in the top section to allow for adjustability.  At the ends of the slot there would be indentations cut to one side to lock the handle at the desired length.  The indents should be shaped to lock the two pieces together and held there under spring tension.  If well thought out and built, it would do the job nicely and cost next to nothing if you can get an old fish net handle.

aa335 wrote:
Yeah, the Honda approach is nice. It looks like Frank's machine has a metal chute. I could see there conceivably being a problem if the plastic Toro chute didn't have enough torsional stiffness, and/or if the detents for the rotation are too strong. You could end up twisting the chute somewhat (like a spring) then having it rotate too far when it finally overcomes the detents (and the spring unwinds). Just speculating. But I don't know how stiff the chutes typically are to rotate. The detents on my Ariens are surprisingly stiff (so I could see this maybe being a problem with mine).

I like the extendable handle idea

jrtrebor wrote:

Why not use two pieces of bar stock?  Attach one to the existing handle, and attach the other bar to it at its free end, so you are making an elbow.  The bar on the handle can be relatively short, and the elbow extension can be long (all the way back to your handlebar, if you have a way to support it).  Then you eliminate the problem of clearance on the sides.

Here's a cool idea that would take a little fabrication...

Find a chute with gear teeth around its circumference (some of the two-stage machines have this, either with a manual crank or electric motor) and the associated drive gear.  Then you need a flexible cable drive system, like a dremel extension.  Then connect one end of the drive cable to the drive gear, and the other end to your 18/19v Makita/DeWalt drill up on the handle.  When you need to rotate the chute, pull the trigger on the drill.  If you need to reverse it, flip the drill into reverse.  However, you should be able to make the chute rotate 360 degrees and not need the reverse drive.

A little complicated, but you can design a whole bunch of mods from the concept (e.g. - old obsolete drill attached directly to chute with remote wires triggering the "go" switch).  I think the modern electric drives on fancy two-stage machines use this concept with servo motors, but I'm not convinced the servo motors are strong enough if the chute freezes up between outings.

Too complicated and sacrilegious for what a SS is supposed to be.  Simple, quick, lightweight.  Just my opinion.     Isn't there an iPhone app for this feature already?  


The idea does remind of me of the movie Back to the Future where Doc and Marty transformed the DeLorean sports car to a flying garbage eating machine.  At least it wasn't a Rolls Royce.