Originally Published: 2020-01-16
Last year I used my small Mahindra tractor and a hand snowblower to keep our property plowed enough to park our cars on. The issue became the piles of snow at the end of the driveway made it difficult for us to see if the road was clear. So this year we made the leap and purchased a John Deere E120 ride on tractor and a Berco Snowblower.
Why John Deere?
Like most mistakes I make in life I rushed. My neighbour had purchased a different brand of lawn tractor after his John Deere LA120 gave up the ghost after many years of service. This meant his John Deere (JD) snowblower was going up for sale. I called a JD service centre and found out that there wasn’t much difference between the LA120 and the E120 so I purchased one from Home Depot.
Trying to attach the snowblower I found out the main difference (change) that occurred. The reverse peddle had moved beside the forward peddle and as such there was no room for the mounts for the old model snowblower! The option I had was to buy a new JD one, and resell the one I had purchased to someone with an older model. But the price was about $2200.00 and another $500 to build and install. Ouch!
Why Berco?
I had never heard of Berco, but in the Lowes flyer they were advertising a Berco snowblower that would fit the JD E120 tractor for $1599.00. Not having a Lowes around here I went to a Rona (Rona was purchased by Lowes and most are shutting down) to see if Rona had the same deal. Nope, they weren’t selling JD anymore, just what was left in inventory. The nice person at the desk got on the computer and found two in inventory at a Rona 20 minutes away. The price? $1499.00! It made sense to me, to spend half of what the JD would charge to build and install it. I would need to install my own Berco.
Even though the Berco is designed to fit may different tractors the one I purchased was set up for the JD E120. Attaching the hardware to the frame was easy. Really the only challenging part was attaching the wiring harness to the ignition wire. Berco even made that easy by including the testing equipment, showing a diagram of where the wire should be and instructions on how to ensure you found the right wire. All in all the whole frame and wiring was easy.
Problems with the Berco and Great Support
Now came the time to attach the snowblower to the frame. Easy enough. now to attach the drive belt to the snowblower, a nightmare. It took two of us a great deal of time to pull and push and finally get the belt on. Engaging the motor to see if it worked, the blower went around twice and the belt came flying off. Again another hour or so went by and we got the belt back on. Same result the belt came flying off.
Fortunately Berco has the most amazing support I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t find a support email or phone so I just sent an email on the contact us page. Within 15 minutes of doing that a support guy was on the phone. I explained the issue and he told me that some of the newest E120’s needed a belt that was 1 inch longer. He sent it out to me by courier and I had it within about 2 days. This time the belt attached in about 1 minute, engaging the belt drive and it worked. Five minutes of those blades turning and I was convinced the belt was there to stay.
One of the features I love is that the snowblower is raised and lowered by an actuator, so a switch instead of hand leverage handles. All worked well and I put it away until the first snow fall. It was a small snowfall only about 1 to 2 inches but I was going to use the snowblower anyway! After about 5 minutes of usage the actuator stopped going up and down, it was down stuck on the ground. Attempting to use the switch to raise it was met with a simple “Click” . I parked the machine checked my wiring. I even went down to the store about an hour drive round trip to replace the relay switch in case that was the cause.
I emailed the support person to explain, within two hours he was on the phone. He had me run through a series of tests to make sure the power and the actuators were connected properly and receiving power at the relay switch. At this point we focused on the “Click”, he called me back a few minutes later and said that this would be caused by a wiring harness that somehow had a broken wire or something causing it to be grounded. A new wiring harness was couriered out and now being very familiar with the set up, it took me about 10 minutes to change it. I was back in business, the snowblower rising and lowering as expected.
Does it all work?
After four hours on the tractor and using the snowblower I have never been so happy. It still takes me about two hours to plow everything but I do a lot more than before! I now have a walking path, a shortcut to my truck path amongst other things I plow but didn’t before. I am also far less tired, riding for two hours is a lot easier that shovelling, using the hand snowblower and tractor to move the snow. So all I can say now is “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow”.
At the end of the day this could have been a bad experience because of my rushing instead of researching but with the excellent help and Rona and the best support I have ever received from any company it is a pleasure and it all came together! I would highly recommend that anyone who is going to be in the country just bit the bullet and get a ride on tractor if you live where there is lots of snow.