The augers and sheer pins of my ST824 are rusted. I can't take them off from the shaft. The bolts of the sheer pins are broke off. I can't punched them out with a hammer and puncher. I can still use the machine just hope I don't hit anything hard. Any recommendations to remove the broken sheer pins and augers?

Soak in PB Blaster, soak again, again, ... heat with a torch, soak with Blaster some more, if necessary dismantle and try to press them off, drill holes along the shaft to allow more places to apply penetrating oil (weld up later) and lastly cut them off by slitting them lengthwise with a grinder or cutoff tool.

^^^ That's pretty much what you have to do. Heat can be your friend. May take multiple cycles of heat and penetrating oil..... patience is required too. Something I fall short on! ;>P I did notice HF sells a motrocyce chain breaker the other day - not sure if it's big enough to try an use as a pin/bolt press? I thought about that just now.....

Thank you for mentioning patience. I didn't because I don't have any and haven't found a link to get any

I like the idea of a chain breaker, if it was big enough to fit around the auger shaft (it might not be).

I bought a used snowblower whose shear pins had bent and deformed, but neither one actually sheared off. So they looked kind of like this:

|
\
|

The augers were not rusted to the shaft, in my case, but I still couldn't drive the bent pins out. So I used a Dremel to cut off one end of the shear pins, then used it to grind away what was left. I ended up also opening up the holes in the augers (not the shaft), until I ground them down low enough that I could drive the pins out.

It was a pain, but it worked.

If your pins are rusted into their holes, you could try to drill them out. I guess I'd be a bit surprised that they're rusted tight into the holes, since normally they have a slightly loose fit in the holes, as I recall. But that doesn't mean they can't rust in place.

I haven't had a machine whose augers rusted to the shaft. But if I had that problem, I was thinking of just running the machine for a while, with the shear pins removed, and driving it into the deepest snowbanks I could find. It's possible that the torque from moving the snow could help spin the augers on the shaft. Probably unlikely, but hey, it would be easy to try if there's snow around.

I agree that the best thing to do may be to simply run the machine without the shear pins and let the vibration work to break the rust free. While I doubt this idea would work to break free wheels rusted onto a shaft, I do believe it will work on the auger, due to the force put onto the auger.

Try heat and then hitting them with a Big Ass hammer. Or if available you could use an air hammer with a punch tool. But get the out side hot first before beating on it.

It's funny because the only people that know that their auger is rusted to the shaft is people like is us. 99% of the population probably has their auger rusted to the shaft, and they don't know it, and 90% of the time it never comes into play, and then that 10% of the time, it ruins the gearcase, and then they buy a new snowblower. And we fret over the small stuff ! But, it's what we like to do ! Agree ?

OMG NO !!!!!

the worm gear case is aluminum, it cannot take the shock.

I had the impeller blocked up, suspending the main shaft in the middle, with the worm gear case hanging free, so I thought it was safe from excess vibration and shock. WRONG.

Just took a few swings of a 2 lb hammer (to the 'pulley end' of the main shaft), and it broke open the worm gear case. That was a year ago, before I found worm-gear shells on ebay, so I just tossed the lot, and now I have new cast-iron gear set...

Generally, either long-term soak/heat cycles, or an arbor press is the only way to go. (I finally found a shop with a 20-ton press... )

I agree that it is only folks like us with this problem. I was dumb to try and BASH the impeller from a perfectly good working auger gear-set.

To each their own. But, in my 40 years of wrenching, I've never found a penetrating oil that works better than Kroil.

Google Deal