If it's fairly smooth it's not usually a problem, as the gravel freezes together and the skids ride over it. I just did a neighbors driveway who has gravel and just put a little upward pressure on the handlebars to stay off any high ones. You can adjust them up, and one fellow here added to the standard skids so they have more contact area. HD was selling Ariens 926LE's for 1/3rd to 1/2 off - $500 to $667. - so $750 is mighty dear. If you wait a month the prices really go down. I bought a 10 yo Ariens ST824 for $212.75 over Easter weekend on eBay last year. The guy I bought it from had just gotten a great deal on an 11528 DLE so he didn't care. For $750 you could probably get an Ariens Pro model. There are some real shysters out there, I've seen a couple guys in NH and one in MA offering machines with virtually no work done on them - original skids, worn scraper bar, old tires - for the price of a well maintained machine.

The town pays big bucks to haul rubbish to a transfer station. Anything that can be recycled helps the cause. I am selective now, I go for Ariens or Toros. The older the better. From hanging out here for awhile, I learned the trick about the main jet on the Tecumseh carbs. The build quality on the old stuff is so much ruggeder than the stuff I see at the big stores. this old beast was either well cared for or very seldom used. Every bushing is good. It has a flat tire, but I have a good set from the Bolens that I grabbed for its factory short block HM70 last winter.

I used to own a Sears 8hp track drive model that I purchased new. I owned it for 6 years. It was the biggest POS that ate belts and drive components every year. I sold it and bought an Ariens 10/32DLE over 10 years ago. It still has the original belts, never clogs on wet snow, chews thru any snow (including 4+ft drifts) and has never broken down on me. Do not think you are saving money by purchasing the sears (Poulan, Husq). Mechanically they will not hold up under heavy use. If you don't believe me, just ask any snowblower repair center what the biggest pieces of crap are. There are many good machines (Ariens, Toro, Simplicity, Honda) and even MTD which are better than the AYP snowblowers.

I had this issue with a 624, and the problem was water in the transmission box. I brought this up with the place I purchased it from, and was told that "an employee at Toro had sabotaged a lot of transmissions with water when he found out it was his last day". I suspect this was not true, as the area the blowers were stored in got severely flooded the day before I bought the unit. They said they had moved the blowers before that, but who knows. Anyways my solution was to eventually open the tranny up and change the grease in it. I did a temporary fix by removing the old grease and "boiling" it until no more water steam came out. I did this out in my garage with the doors open. Then I returned the grease to the tranny case. The temp fix ran for the rest of season. My symptoms were the exact same as the OP; Hard shifting when below freezing; Would not go into reverse until the blower was used for 10 minutes or so; Not good news, but it is fixable by the end user. - Techowl -