105 struggles after 2hrs of snowthrowing

[cmouta]

Hey guys, hopefully you can give me some insight as to what may be going on. I'm pretty new to tractors/snow blowers/throwers/etc and this was my first full attempt at doing my driveway.

Preface, my 105 ran great all summer mowing my yard for hours at a time and I keep it garaged in the winter.

I was very gloriously throwing snow all over the place last night for about 1.5-2 hours with my cc105 and cc36 snowthrower. Feel free to critique my process as I have no idea if im "doing it right"

I'd throw a line of of the white stuff, disengage my auger, lift thrower, bring my throttle down a bit, never less than half, reverse, drop thrower, WOT, engage auger, do another line.

After maybe an hour an a half i noticed my auger was not disengaging. Foolishly I kept cleaning snow, and it backfired maybe twice in the next 20 minutes and started bogging. I turned it off and finished with a shovel.

I was able to adjust the pto clutch to get it to disengage but I'm wondering what happened?

It is VERY possible the belt is too tight as I struggle with the idea of "tighten it until slack is out of the belt, then tighten it 3-3.5 more turns." The belt is rubber, it always feels like there is slack! Ever since I installed the thrower, somethings chirps a bit on startup of the engine. maybe the clutch was already slipping a bit into engagement. it just seems weird I would have to adjust it all of a sudden.


Would an overly tight belt be overworking the engine?

The front end of the 105 was covered in snow and ice and things started working very slowly like when starting the tractor back up, the brake safety switch would take about 5 seconds to realize it was engaged to start. Maybe some vital part was iced up causing overheating or moisture was getting into my engine? Air filter was on pretty tight though. Maybe a frozen throttle cable or something?

Sorry for the novel, thanks!