He had plowed out a friend’s business and was working on the sidewalk at his home in the 800 block of South 14th Street when the contraption suddenly made a loud noise, emitted a big puff of oily smoke and then fell silent.

VanEvery looked back at the now still engine and then into the nearby snow. A chunk or two of what used to be inside the motor lay buried where it fell.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said.

The catastrophic parts failure left a gaping hole in the side of the engine block.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Tony VanEvery, of Fort Dodge, suffers an oh no moment Wednesday afternoon when the engine on his home built “Hillbilly Snow Plow” blew.

VanEvery built the machine from an old Snapper riding lawn mower with his brother, Patrick VanEvery.

They removed the mower deck, installed a blade on the front that can be lowered and raised with a lever and even installed a headlight. There’s a car battery to start it and, in the spirit of its creation, lots of things that are still attached but serve no apparent purpose. They kept the original seat and gas tank. For a muffler, they borrowed one from a motorcycle, but it had became detached during Wednesday’s plowing.

“The handlebars are from a motorcycle,” he said. “We call it the Hillbilly Plow.”

VanEvery took the engine blowing up in stride.

He quickly enlisted Zach Judd to help him push it back into the driveway. Plans for getting it back up and plowing are in the works.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
With a gaping hole in the side of the engine, Tony VanEvery gets a little help from Zach Judd to push his home-built “Hillbilly Snow Plow” back to his driveway after the engine blew Wednesday while he was plowing.

“We’ll put a different motor on it,” he said.