Yard Work And All That

This week I started doing some yard work for the first time since the lawn stopped growing this past summer. As part of that project I decided it was time to get my hands on a leaf vacuum and I selected the Poulan Pro, which was a bargain at $100 at Lowe's although I probably could have done better shopping around. I was pretty tired of raking and bagging and raking and bagging and raking and bagging, and the promise of mulching the leaves would let me pack a lot more into the ridiculously expensive lawn waste recycle bags we have to buy here at $1.50 each. It works pretty well, starts easily and runs smoothly too but the one great weakness that this vacuum has is a plastic impeller.

With the broken walnut shell mess that the squirrels have left, it's a dubious proposition to expect the impeller to get through the season-it's pretty much fragged after about five hours' use.
The good news is that new impellers number 25 in the picture, (part number 545113601, seems to fit a whole bunch of leaf blowers under different trade names) can be purchased for about $3 a copy from any number of online vendors. Not being one to do things by halves I ordered three of them, but it sure would be nice if the impeller was made of alloy.