Well, after a mostly trouble free season with the snowblower, my snowblower suffered from a hardware fault that necessitated a replacement.
The symptoms were an inability to maintain power to the auger while in use. It sounded like power was intermittently being cut to the auger. When the auger would lose power, Yarbo would stop moving and wait for the auger to recover. My attempts to diagnose the issue yielded no result.
After opening a ticket, the issue was diagnosed by Yarbo and determined to be an electrical problem inside the snowblower module itself. A swift replacement was scheduled
That sucks, so sorry to hear this! At least they are moving quickly on the replacement.
The replacement snowblower module arrived yesterday. I decided to compare both units, looking for improvements or differences. Here’s what I observed…
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Yes, the new snowblower has a different timing belt. The new belt looks like the same light colored belt that other people have been having issues with. I decided I will continue to use it so I can watch and see if it fails.
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The magnet that Yarbo uses for sensing the module is a different larger design.
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The snow chute has new larger attachment screws. I wonder if there was an issue with durability with the older smaller screws.
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The auger’s drive pulley is a slightly different design
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The old timing belt actually makes a bit of noise when the auger is manually rotated compared to the new timing belt which is pretty much completely silent.
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I was not able to observe any physical damage to either the new timing belt or the old one, but they are obviously made with different materials.
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I noticed what looks like overheating damage on my old auger motor. Not sure if that’s what this is, but it looks like overheating to me.
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I tested the new snowblower this morning for the first time. So far, so good. It’s working perfectly so far from my point of view. (knock on wood)
Despite the fact that the new timing belt seems a lot quieter when manually rotated, I could not hear any differences in sound when Yarbo was in operation.
I’ll end up doing 1 or 2 more snowblowing runs today, then I’ll bring Yarbo into the garage to inspect the belt again. Hopefully there won’t be any damage. I’m keeping my old snowblower’s belt just in case!
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Yup definitely keep your old belt! S1 minor HW updates
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That’s not heat damage but a crimp to keep the housing on. Does look like melted plastic, but it’s metal. I think the chute bolts were just to standardize the screws and mounting points. Especially if you remove the diverter.
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Thanks for the clarity.
Second snowblower run of the day was perfectly uneventful. I still want to examine the timing belt though. Extremely curious to see if any damage starts to form.
Definitely would recommend watching it. Especially if it was warehouse stock, may still have the bad belt or whatever the issue is.
I wish if Yarbo knew of a bad batch of belts they could isolate them tell people to hold off firing up their S1 and ship new belts. Seems like when that belt fails it can cause some other damage to the module.
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Yea, I figure that I’ll check the belt after every second snowblowing run or so.
Really, I just want to see if this new belt ever exhibits the issue or not, and hopefully catch the belt in the act of starting to disintegrate so I can see why it’s happening. I’d love to know why it has been happening. Just curious about it.
I am keeping my old good belt, so I have a spare on hand in case it’s ever needed.
Yes, exactly! Yarbo has never came out and announced that they got a bad batch of belts, but that’s where my money is.
They really should be owning up to it and proactively replacing people’s belts (if that really is the cause).
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I mean for every bad belt on the forum there has to be a fair number of belt gremlins lurking in the silence.
The bubbling around the balancing marks is sorta concerning
Seen a few post the same concern and Yarbo said it was just from the tool that crimped it (for balancing).
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Sorry to hear you ran into that issue, but it’s great to hear the replacement has been working well so far after a couple of uses. We hope it continues to perform smoothly for you. And thank you for taking the time to share such detailed observations and comparisons between the old and new units.
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