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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Advice on using blade for snow removal
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Posted by Steve F. on December 08, 1998 at 12:23:51:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Advice on using blade for snow removal posted by Lee Forbush Professional snow plower on November 27, 1998 at 21:04:06:
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: : : Dennis:
: : :::If you have a small enough blade, you can push it backwards. That is clumsy and a pain in the neck and back from looking back for 200 ft of driveway. I you really want to plow snow, have a front mounted blade. On the angle of the blade will depend on the snow and how much ballast you have on the blade end of the tractor. Fluffy snow plows easy, you can use more angle. You have to use more angle on fluffy snow or you will leave a dribble trail on the high end of the angle. Wet snow plows hard. You need less angle for wet snow or it will push your tractor sideways depending on how much ballast you have on the wheels on the blade end of the tractor. If you have lots of ballast in the rear tires, use a rear blade pulling the snow. If you have a front blade, you want ballast in the rear tires to getr traction and ballast in the front tires to prevent the tractor from moving sideways when you angle the blade.-----Lee Forbush, Case collector and professional snow plower with a 1982 chevy truck with 200 lbs. in middle of truck and 450 - 700 lbs in rear. Since you say you have an SC with an 8 ft blade, you will find that with a decent amount of snow you will have trouble backing up and pushing the snow if your drive
is gravel. For smaller tractors that won't pull your hat off your head going backwards, you may be stuck trying to pull the snow to clear your drive. I have an 8N
(without fluid in the tires, but I'll fix that!) that won't push anything in reverse with a 7 ft blade, but will do a decent job plowing snow up to 12 - 14 inches or so if I
pull it. That's on gravel. On asphalt, with a small, light tractor, the only way to plow is to do it in reverse. You clear the snow before running over it and packing it
down. On halfway clean just-plowed asphalt, you can get the traction, even in reverse, to push quite a bit of snow, especially if the blade is angled. It shoots it to one
side like the city trucks fixed up with snow blades. Works great. Trying to pull the snow on asphalt does not work. It frustrated the fire out of me last winter until
an old-timer helped me get with the program by telling me to push the snow. I didn't feel like throwing my tractor in the ditch as much after that. It worked pretty
good. I cleared a nasty hill on the small county road for our small rural farming subdivision by primarily backing up the whole time. You have a neck ache afterwards,
but you also get the job done. Lee suggested a front-mounted blade. Yeah, wouldn't that be nice. You could clear the snow before running over it, which would give
you excellent traction. You could push while clearing snow on gravel or asphalt and not have to work real hard to do it. I have seen some truck-blades that look like
they would work great on a tractor. I just checked one out at lunch that seemed to have just two hook up points - metal cylinders that push onto some sort of rod
and use a winch to pick up the blade. They're around $900 - $1000 though. I don't think they would be hard to adapt to a tractor with minor fabrication work. I
have a blade already though, which I would like to mount to the front of my tractor. Anyone have any experience with this? I was thinking about some sort of cable
system like John Smith has with his ARPS cable/blade setup on his 8N. I don't think mounting the blade would be all that difficult. I was thinking about bolting
something to the front end, on each side of engine (mount actually to the front axle arms - whatever they're called) then attach some leveling arms like the ones on the
rear end, a riser of some sort from that point as well with a pulley at the top to lift those arms and the blade. You would have to attach a cable to the rear leveling
arms, I was thinking, through two pulleys, then over the top pulley on the riser on the front in order to be able to lift the blade using the tractor hydraulics. I don't
think it would be all that hard to weld a crossover piece between the left and right sides to give you a place to connect a short top-link to keep the blade level when
lifting it with the hydraulics. I'm talking about something here that looks similar to the rear end, with leveling arms and a top link connecting point, but instead of
using lift arms to raise the leveling arms, just use cables. For extra support you could even run some ball-joint rods from the rear end (mounted below the axle) to the front attachment point (to still allow the
front axle to pivot) and another rod forming a "Y" welded to that which goes up to the top of the riser for vertical support for the pulleys. I've thought about this for
some time and it seems like I could make this work. The cables would attach to the rear leveling arms at the point where the chains attach at the middle of the arm to
keep the leveling arms from touching the tires. Just attach the cables on the outside of that bolt. Simple? I haven't done anything yet, but it sounds like it could be
done. I would appreciate comments either on this forum or via email at sfortner@lexmark.com. Thanks.
Steve
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