"Do the tires need chains?"

It helps a lot.

Is the electric start battery powered? Batteries lose a lot of capacity in the cold, which may describe your garage.

In addition to the battery, you may want to look at the shear pins on the tines. My brother and I had the best laugh ever. He had the same exact situation as yours....he said the damn thing wore him out and everyone else was done way before he was and the snow was just barely coming out of the shute on his. When I looked at it, the blades were on a double shaft. A wedge of concrete from a sidewalk patch had worked it's way into one side and jammed the blade. He did over 200 feet of walkway like that. The shear pin is designed to shear off if something like that happens to keep from damaging the unit. He was using only one half the blower to do the job. What made us laugh so hard, he did the patch on the concrete the summer before. We bought 6 pins for $3.00 from the hardware store so he could have spares.

The older Ariens are great workhorse machines, but simply don't throw snow with the same velocity or power as some of the newer ones. With that said, your machine should be capable of tackling some of worst conditions you can force on it, unlike many of the newer ones struggling. You've got an old workhorse tank. Keep it running.

It should start right up, usually within 4 seconds of pressing the starter button and be set to work within a minute or two. Setting and using the choke properly? Fresh fuel? Healthy spark and spark plug? Ever had the carb jets cleaned (they're tiny holes in a carb part that are actually pretty easy to get to).

There's a good board here that you should post this on or search for information:

Here is a link that might be useful: linked

I don't have chains on mine but the key is to get blowing before you allow the driveway to ice. The TOROs have the advantage of using 110V to crank em. I plug it in and get it started and let it warm up for a few minutes. If it runs out of fuel or otherwise has to be restart, the rope works pretty well once it's been running.

I have a problem with the handles on my Honda HS928 snowblower....both handles fell off! Had them welded back on, but I tried to slide the machine on a 2inch platform to keep it up off the cement floor in my garage, and the arms fell off again. I've been pulling to the side on the handles to turn the machine, but obviously that wasn't the right thing to do. She's only 5 years old, but she's not much good without handles. Can anyone help?

I have a noma 10hp 29in snowblower that works great in reverse but it does not work so well in the forward gears. It will start to move forward and blow snow but then stop and you can feel something jumping. If I lift the wheels off the ground they work great. What could be the issue?