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Toro 28" Power Max Snow Blower
Toro 28" Power Max HD 828 OAE 252cc Electric Start Gas Snow Blower (38838) Review

If you live in a region that gets several feet of snow each year and you have a goodsized driveway, then a snow blower might be worth the investment, We recently had the opportunity to put the Toro 28" Power Max Snow Blower to use.

Toro 28" Power Max Snow Blower Highlights [At first glance]

At a glance there are several build features to this Toro that are attractive.

The 28” wide by 21” deep snow blower is rated to throw snow up to 45 feet, this is a nice feature when you need to move snow across a driveway or over a fence.

Powered by a 252cc Toro Premium 4cycle OHV motor, you can start this snow lower two ways:

1. Pull start
2. Electric start

We found the snowblower to consistently start on the first pull everytime. [tested 20 times] But as someone who just recovered from a rotator cuff surgery, I really appreciated the electric start feature. I store this unit in my shed and used an extension cord to start it, very convenient if you have access to power.

The Toro “Quick Stick” snow chute directional control, [joystick] is innovative and easy to use. It does take a bit of a learning curve as we’ve never seen this feature before. It allows you fast and simple onehanded manipulation of the steel chute direction and chute deflector. [left / right and up / down]

The Toro snowblower has a selfpropelled triggerless steering for easy, tight turning, there are no additional levers required.

An exclusive AntiClogging System meters snow intake to reduce clogs and optimize clearing performance with no shear pins in sight. Instead, the Toro has an aggressive heavyduty auger that will purposely stall the machine if it rolls into something hard. This design was built into the machine to eliminate the need for sheer pins. This situation happened once to use during testing and once we backed away from the object we were able to start the machine on the first pull.

Lastly the LED light is adjustable and bright and worked nicely in the dark to illuminate a path.
Toro 28" Power Max Snow Blower Specifications

• AntiClogging System (ACS), 14” / 36 cm Dia., Commercial Grade; no shear pins needed
• Quick Stick® (200˚ Rotation), Steel
28” (71 cm) clearing width, 21” (53.3 cm) intake height
• SelfPropelled
• Toro Premium 252cc OHV 4cycle
• 252cc
• LED Headlight Standard
• Electric Start
• Throws snow up to 45’ (13.7 m)*
• 16" (40.6 cm)


Using the Toro 28" Power Max Snow Blower [How’d it do?]

This snowblower has so far impressed me! Its powerful and truly throws snow like a catapult.

I used it in multiple storms and on multiple driveways to test it. The biggest storm was 18inches. What I noticed was that I had to use the lowest great and sometimes had to stop to allow the blower to catch up. I mostly listened to the motor and chute discharge and gauged my pausing this on what I was seeing in front of me.

Once I had a path cleared I took ½ to ¾ bites of snow and the blower ate threw it effortlessly. It’s a very powerful snowblower, it never stalled, even going through icy and slushy material.
Like we mentioned earlier, the snow discharge chute joystick was not instantly intuitive, but after using a few times we got the hang of it.

The autoturn works very well for maneuverability, but the downside is any drag or impact on one side of the bucket makes the machine want to turn in that direction, which you have to counteract. I’m not 100% sure why and will be checking the skid adjustment.


Room For Improvement?

We did notice that the 1st gear is just a little to fast at the end of a path and you need to pump the drive lever to easy your yay to the end. A slightly slower lower gear would be better.

The direction for the blower are a series of diagrams and I felt that this could be improved, as could the gas shutoff knob. This knob is NOT labeled and is confusing.

The single lever control for the snow discharge chute, and is great, except that the lever and the chute gearing is plastic and users should be careful not to force it when there is resistance to movement.


Cost

The Toro 28" Power Max Snow Blower cost approximately $1300 and can be purchased at independent dealers or big big stores.


Overall Impression

A local small machine repair shop told me that he sees the Toro machines the least for repair. That’s a nice testament.

The Toro 28" Power Max Snow Blower is a solid feeling machine and excellent investment. Overall we were impressed with the build quality and excellent power on this unit. Plus the price is right