Toro Snowblower that revs high after use

[sblg43]

I have not yet looked too seriously at this unit - Toro 38602 single stage snowblower with Tecumseh engine.

The owner says that after he has been using the unit for a while (I don't know how long that is) it begins to rev up too fast.
So he shuts it down and lets it sit for awhile. After a cool down, it will start up just fine and be useable again.

Without having any snow here just yet, so I can't test it - does anybody know where I should start looking? Is the throttle linkage freezing up? Is there a governor issue to look into?

Thanks for any input.

[NO0C]

I would be looking at the governor vane, link and throttle shaft for binding upon warming up.

Might be just need a cleaning and lube.

Good luck.

[Skywatcher]

Hi 43

I have a John Deere 321 (rebranded MTD) with the 3 horse Tecumseh 2 cycle that does the same thing. The governor link gets caked with snow dust and stop moving. Shut it down for 10 minutes and the heat from the engine melts the snow dust away. Unit works fine again until next time. A NO0C says, a cleaning and lubricating (possibly silicone spray lube) would help, it's just a little awkward to get to the governor on these engines. Hope this helps,

Sky

[sblg43]

So I finally get a chance to look at this thing...

As mentioned above, it sure was a pain to get access to the governor linkage. Had to remove the chute in order to remove the top of the unit. The top was held on by rusted hardware that had to be drilled out and replaced. Once the top was off, I found that the muffler wasn't attached. The two bolts were completely out. The muffler just fell to the side as soon as I lifted the top off of the unit.

Then I had to remove the fuel tank and remove the engine shroud. When I could finally see the governor linkage, it looked and acted just fine. So I juiced it up with my favorite spray lubricant - Tri-Flow.

Then I proceeded to reassemble everything.

Here is my thinking - the muffler is quite large. I imagine that it gets plenty hot. With such a large surface area, it should keep everything in that small engine compartment toasty enough to prevent freezing. However, since the muffler wasn't attached at all, is is possible that that is the reason for some snow and ice build up in the engine compartment?

Regardless, it is all back together and running strong. No snow here yet so I can't field test it with any accuracy. Just gonna have to wait for snow.