One of the many annoyances of rural life is shear pins. They are essential to protect valuable, irreplaceable equipment. They are made to break if a load is applied to a drive shaft. We are thankful that they do shear and the equipment is safe. But it never seems like you have a replacement on hand when one breaks. Trip over to Tractor Supply.
You cannot just use any bolt that fits, you must use a bolt designed to break. Shear pin bolts are category 2 or 5 bolts. These are hardened, which makes them brittle. That brittleness makes them break if an unusually strong load is applied, such as when a moving part gets jammed. In my case, I was clearing snow from my neighbor's parking lot and I scooped up a trailer pintle pin, which jammed the blower fan.
The shear pin sheared, like it is supposed to and the snow blower wasn't damaged.
I was hoping this shear pin would be accessible, and it is. There is a closed gearbox on the outside and I was afraid it would be in there. I used a torpedo kerosene heater to melt the snow and ice off the snow blower so I could see all the parts and have access to this pin location. I have it rotated 90 degrees just to see and measure the bolt size; it is a 1/4 inch bolt. The bolt hole goes through part shown and also the lower part of the orange part, hidden behind the shaft.
Very
hard place to get my big hands into. I could only turn the wrench one
eighth of a turn at a time so it took a while. But, it is now all fixed up and
ready to go without hauling it to a shop and paying hundreds of dollars.
