# Tracked Blower - Transmission Modification??



## l008com (Jan 9, 2022)

I have a Troy Bilt 2690XP snow blower. I always wanted one with tracks and in 2014, I got one. Overall, the tracks are great. But they have one significant fault. Reverse is painfully slow on this blower. I don't know if they do it for some kind of saftey reason or what, but I spend most of my snow blowing time very slowly walking backwards. I'm working in tight spaces that make constant turning back and forth impractical. So I'm stuck racing forward then slowly crawling back. 

Every spring I take the bottom cover off and lubricate the gears on this machine. The transmission is just like every snow blower transmission I've ever seen. A main drive plate, and then a rubber wheel that slides along to give you a gear ratio. 

So in theory, if I could just side the entire rubber wheel down an extra inch, that would shift all of my gears down. 6th would be slower, 5th, 4th, 3rd would be slower. 2nd would probably be super slow. 1st would probably be slow reverse, r1 would be faster reverse and r2 would be a reasonable speed reverse! This would be a great mod but unfortunately I don't see any way to actually do this. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the inside of my machine but the way the linkage between the speed selector and transmission is set up, it doesn't look like theres any way to modify it in that way. 

Has anyone else done mods like this? Have any thoughts on what I might be able to do? I could save so much time snow blowing if I could just find a way to make reverse reasonably fast! 









Heres a diagram of the transmission from the manual. You can't really see in this photo but the way the linkage moves the rubber wheel, there really isn't any way to significantly adjust it's position. 










Here's a stock photo of the machine.


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## db130 (Feb 16, 2013)

I didn't see the full model number being posted, so I pulled up the owner's manual for a similar 2690XP (Model # 31AM7BR3766). Here are the linkage adjustment instructions, I'm guessing yours is similar. 


















I would first check if your rod is adjusted as the factory recommends, so that the ferrule on the shift rod can slide in the upper hole in Figure 4-7 while the shift bracket is being pushed all the way down like in Figure 4-8, while the speed selector is in the fastest position.

Once you've confirmed this and if you still find reverse to be too slow, then it'd be a matter of turning the adjustment ferrule so that the rod is _shorter_, no?

Theoretically, if you were to do that factory procedure while the speed selector is in the *2nd* fastest position, that would also move the friction wheel closer to the center of the drive plate, which would also get you faster reverse speeds.


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## l008com (Jan 9, 2022)

Some time has passed but when I packed away my snow blower this year, I took some pics of the inside so I could better show what my issue is.

First off, it's nothing to do with the adjustment of the shifter or the cable. Its a mod I'd like to make in the gearbox itself.
However because of the way it works, the "L" lever pulling the main pulley over, I don't see how I could really modify that at all to pull it over more, because the lever itself is physically in the way. Unless I was able to build my own modified lever, I suppose that could work.

Here is the gearbox from a very low angle, the shaft that is vertical in the photo is the shifter. It rotates, moving the curved arm, which in turn moves the rubber wheel. To get faster reverse, the rubber wheel has to go to the right more than it does now in R2. Ideally a lot more but any amount will help:









Here it is from a different angle:









Here's the same pic, marked up a bit so you can see which part (blue) is the shift lever that actually moves when you change gears. Due to the way it's shaped, it's very easy for it to push the rubber wheel way to the left (the drive speeds) but it can't really pull it very far to the right (the reverse speeds):









Here's a video of me wiggling the shift lever so you can see exactly how the insides move incase the photos aren't clear:





I feel like, if i were able to create a custom shape rubber wheel with more offset, that could move it over maybe another half inch or so which would be better than nothing, but there's gotta be a better way overall.


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## Yanmar Ronin (Jan 31, 2015)

Welcome to SBF, glad to have you aboard.

Maybe some lubrication in there would help?


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## l008com (Jan 9, 2022)

Yanmar Ronin said:


> Maybe some lubrication in there would help?


Whaaaaaaaaa? Am I not explaining what I want to do clearly?


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## Northeast Dave (Apr 29, 2020)

I have a Honda track blower with the same issue, reverse is painfully slow. Mine is light enough that I can just pull it back manually without reverse (in neutral of course).
I understand what you’re trying to do with the transmission but in my opinion I wouldn’t do it. I would chalk it up to a limitation of the machine _a la_ the trade off, I have tracks and can go anywhere, adjust everything, but reverse is slow. There is no perfect configuration of a blower which is why many of us have a few of them (there’s other reasons we have more than one machine, but I digress).

If you do take this on please post pix and how you did it to aid others with a similar machine.


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## orangputeh (Nov 24, 2016)

what do you mean it has nothing to so with an adjustment?????

did you even try that yet?

It can be done with my Honda's on the older friction disk systems.
The adjustment actually moves it.

What about the friction disk pressure adjustment on the drive wheel ? Did you check that?

It pisses me off when someone tries to give people valuable advice and they are just ignored.
If you know so much why did you bother posting here?


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## Town (Jan 31, 2015)

l008com said:


> I have a Troy Bilt 2690XP snow blower. I always wanted one with tracks and in 2014, I got one. Overall, the tracks are great. But they have one significant fault. Reverse is painfully slow on this blower. I don't know if they do it for some kind of saftey reason or what, but I spend most of my snow blowing time very slowly walking backwards. I'm working in tight spaces that make constant turning back and forth impractical. So I'm stuck racing forward then slowly crawling back.
> 
> Every spring I take the bottom cover off and lubricate the gears on this machine. The transmission is just like every snow blower transmission I've ever seen. A main drive plate, and then a rubber wheel that slides along to give you a gear ratio.
> 
> ...


I would expect that there is reverse gear stop similar to your forward speed stop. A short roll pin. The forward and reverse movement can only go to the stop and no farther. To increase the speed in reverse you would remove the reverse side roll pin and drill a new hole To the right. Of course you may not have space to the right.

The mechanism for moving the rubber tired wheel may limit the reverse movement and that is where you adjust the movement to have the wheel mechanism abut the new stop. Likely forward may not reach the forward stop. Make sure the mechanism does not fall apart with the new range of movement.


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## l008com (Jan 9, 2022)

Town said:


> I would expect that there is reverse gear stop similar to your forward speed stop. A short roll pin. The forward and reverse movement can only go to the stop and no farther. To increase the speed in reverse you would remove the reverse side roll pin and drill a new hole To the right. Of course you may not have space to the right.
> 
> The mechanism for moving the rubber tired wheel may limit the reverse movement and that is where you adjust the movement to have the wheel mechanism abut the new stop. Likely forward may not reach the forward stop. Make sure the mechanism does not fall apart with the new range of movement.


The problem you describe is one I MAY run in to eventually, but for now that's not a problem because there is no way to get the arm to move the friction wheel over any further. The actuator that moves it is rotating and it's already at 3'oclock at that point. If I can come up with some way to modify this, then I'll probably run in to your problem, but that will be easy enough to fix with a Dremel.


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## l008com (Jan 9, 2022)

orangputeh said:


> what do you mean it has nothing to so with an adjustment?????
> 
> did you even try that yet?
> 
> ...


I'm trying to get my snow blower to 'shift' into a faster reverse gear then it is designed to be able to do. This isn't a matter of adjustment or lubrication, it's a matter of modification and changing the design. If I'm missing something and there is some easy adjustment somewhere that will shift all my gearing to the "right" (meaning forwards get slower and reverses get faster) then please explain where this adjustment is so I can give it a try. But if you're just talking about tightening the shifter cable, you can see in the images and video I posted how that's not going to help here. Your suggestion of adjusting the friction disk pressure makes me think you also didn't actually read all my posts and you also are not understanding what I'm trying to do here. Which is give my machine a faster reverse gear.


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## WrenchIt (Dec 6, 2020)

I think the problem is the configuration of the curved shifting arm. If you can figure out what modification to make, buy a new shifter arm, cut it, weld it, put it in there and see if that does the trick.

I'm suggesting you either lengthen or shorten a part of that curved arm to move the disk farther in the direction you want.

edit: It is possible if you do that mod, you might lose some forward speed in exchange for increased reverse speed. I'm not advocating you do this, merely suggesting a possible path to what you want. Should you make a mod and trip and get hurt backing up, you will be fully responsible for your injury.

edit 2: Read this thread - 








Slow reverse speed


Hi all - new here. I have had a half-dozen or so snowblowers over the years. My newest is a 3-stage 28" Club Cadet (purchased 2019 from Home Depot). Seems OK - not sure the 3rd stage adds anything TBH. Still can't handle slush - keep those augers turning or you will be digging out ice. It has...




www.snowblowerforum.com


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## l008com (Jan 9, 2022)

Lol beat you to it, I already read and commented on that post. There aren't really any solutions in there unfortunately. 

And yeah, replacing that arm with a different shaped arm, the blue circled one in my image above, may fix the problem, but that's not going to be easy. 

Another thought I had was seeing if I could install a reverser from a go cart into the drivetrain somewhere. I'm not sure if or where there would be space for it, but having 1-6 forward then being able to flip a whole other lever and have 1-6 in reverse, that would be awfully nice. This idea probably won't work but if designed from the factory, something like this could work really well. 

Also I don't think theres really that much danger of getting hurt from reversing too fast. I mean even if you trip and fall, you're letting go of the levers and the machine will be stopping real fast. Especially my tracked unit, they do not roll easily.


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## Tony-chicago (Feb 10, 2021)

Not sure if a new design will fit or not.
A slow reverse is annoying.
But I do know that a fast reverse can be dangerous


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