# My Review of Skids on My Ariens #921040



## 88racing (Jan 20, 2016)

I'll just start out with this statement....Everybody snow blows in different conditions and on different surfaces.

My conditions vary from wet heavy snow to fluffy to fine and drifts both soft and hard along with clearing old crusty concrete snow. The surfaces I snow blow on are concrete with a coarse brush finish and asphalt with a chip seal coat. 

The other conditions that happens up here in the Dakotas and my work schedule is sometimes I'll get the snow cleared then the wind kicks up and causes drifts but as the wind creates drifts and the temps fall the drifts and any additional EOD get hardened. 

Now that's all out in the open, on to the review...

The other thing I'd like to add is these all perform well in fresh snow with the exception of the steel skids causing grief with auto turn on my concrete surface.

The skids from left to right...Arnold's Universal Poly, Ariens Poly, Toro Poly, and Ariens steel. 



All of the Poly skids perform really nice in fresh snow. With hardened crusty snow and firm to hard drifts the Ariens Poly skids act like door stops. The Arnold's will ride up but are the thinnest and behave a lot like ArmorSkids would. Here are the thickness differences. The Toro are the closest to the stock steel skids and they get through the hardened snow just like the steel skids will. 



Different order in the lineup of skids...




The Toros come with 5/16" hardware and are designed to be used with it. So I had to open up the slots a bit (a little bit over a 1/16" on each side) with files on the outer edges in order for the Ariens 3/8" hardware to work. I used wood rasp files on the poly and metal files on the steel reinforcement mounting plate. To mount the Toros I used the shorter Ariens steel skid bolt in the front and the longer Ariens poly skid bolt in the back. 

Here's a pic of them mounted on the bucket...



The other thing that I also have to look at is how close I can get to side walls. The Ariens poly skids sticks out too far and the Arnold's skids the bolt ends protrude too much. But these are just observations I noted and wanted to mention. 

As I stated before we all don't share the same conditions or surfaces. I'm just posting about my experiences with these 4 different skids. 

Thanks


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## RedOctobyr (Mar 2, 2014)

Thank you for the comparison, and for sharing your experiences. 

I installed the Ariens Poly skids at the end of last season, coming from Ariens Pro steel skids (single-sided, but extra-thick). 

We haven't had much snow so far, so I haven't gotten a lot of experience with them yet. On my 24" bucket, with open differential, I like the Ariens Poly skids so far. They seem to ride smoothly and straight, and I haven't had issues yet with them catching on things. 

My Ariens steel skids were no longer stock, however. I had welded thin stainless plates to their undersides, to "rebuild" them (they were getting thin). But I didn't bevel/chamfer the leading edge of my plates as much as I should have, I'm guessing, so that probably made them extra likely to catch on bumps/imperfections. So my baseline was kind of skewed. 

But so far, I like the Ariens Poly skids. They are admittedly rather bulky. I hadn't considered whether that would make them hard to push into icy snow. I was only thinking about the increased-longevity benefit, having a larger wear surface. As I recall, with the provided hardware, the bolts don't stick out beyond the side of the skids. So at least if I clip something, I should only hit it with the plastic skids, vs a steel fastener.


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## jermar (Dec 10, 2014)

Thanks for the great comparison. I bought the Robalon skids for my Compact 24. I like them because they aren't as thick as the Ariens, and can use the hardware from the stock steel skids.
Robalon Skid Shoes Part A108BD Fits Ariens 2 Stage Snow Blowers New | eBay


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## 88racing (Jan 20, 2016)

jermar said:


> Thanks for the great comparison. I bought the Robalon skids for my Compact 24. I like them because they aren't as thick as the Ariens, and can use the hardware from the stock steel skids.
> Robalon Skid Shoes Part A108BD Fits Ariens 2 Stage Snow Blowers New | eBay


My main objective was to look for something thinner than the Ariens poly skids. Robalon had crossed my searches but I had already stuck some money into researching these others. Thanks for mentioning them!


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