Dewie's snowblower reconditioning & improvments
Jan 19, 2016 9:01:54 GMT -4
mostheman and eastcoastcam like this
Post by Dewie on Jan 19, 2016 9:01:54 GMT -4
A few people have been asking me the odd question about some photos I've posted on Instagram so I may as well throw together a thread about it.
Last year I picked up an old smashed snow blower and fixed it up. Generally is worked pretty good and I blew a ton of snow with it (about 130h worth of clearing snow actually...)
The gear box had a bad bearing which ate a seal and I was putting gear oil in it every time I used it.
The chute aiming mechanism was a hydraulic ram that moved cables on pulleys and it was awful - not only would it fall off due to poor geometry but it would also come loose and I couldn't aim it all the way one way or another.
I set out to fix all these issues. When I removed the gear box I found a bunch of metal was rusted through (previous owner had put it away with salt on it) and so I fixed that, wire wheeled everything and threw some paint on it.
One thing I noticed last year when driving on the roads is that people seemed to have no concept of where the snowblower was - particularly at night. I also wanted to paint the wear surfaces with a paint I could buy in a spray can so I can cover it up at the end of the season easily - Tremclad yellow was chosen.
A friend of mine gave me some blue paint that nearly matched the tractor so I sprayed it on as well - it was at this point people started telling me it looked like a Minion :lol:
The paint darkened up fortunately and I added some reflective tape to it and it looked way less like a minion
One problem I had last year was the hydraulic hoses for aiming the chute and the tip at the top of the chute were hard to hold in place and they'd occasionally rub on my rear tires
To fix this I went to the scrap yard and found an old hay rake spring and combined it with (I think) a spring from a trampoline and a bungee cord to make "holder" to hold the lines up out of the way.
Next up was a new aiming mechanism for the chute. In talking with a neighbor who is a fabricator we opted to go with a hydraulic motor turning some custom made gears welded to the chute/snowblower base.
The hydraulic motor, despite already being fairly slow sped, was still way too fast. I had my father thread a pipe nipple and make up a plug for it which I then drilled a hole in to reduce flow
The above hole was actually too big! (5/64) and I stepped it down to 3/64 - which was literally the smallest drill bit I had:
I put all the bits together and ended up with:
With the freshly rebuilt gearbox (new bearings and seals) back in place and a re-conditioned sheer-bolt system on the main driveshaft I was back in action:
Last year I picked up an old smashed snow blower and fixed it up. Generally is worked pretty good and I blew a ton of snow with it (about 130h worth of clearing snow actually...)
The gear box had a bad bearing which ate a seal and I was putting gear oil in it every time I used it.
The chute aiming mechanism was a hydraulic ram that moved cables on pulleys and it was awful - not only would it fall off due to poor geometry but it would also come loose and I couldn't aim it all the way one way or another.
I set out to fix all these issues. When I removed the gear box I found a bunch of metal was rusted through (previous owner had put it away with salt on it) and so I fixed that, wire wheeled everything and threw some paint on it.
One thing I noticed last year when driving on the roads is that people seemed to have no concept of where the snowblower was - particularly at night. I also wanted to paint the wear surfaces with a paint I could buy in a spray can so I can cover it up at the end of the season easily - Tremclad yellow was chosen.
A friend of mine gave me some blue paint that nearly matched the tractor so I sprayed it on as well - it was at this point people started telling me it looked like a Minion :lol:
The paint darkened up fortunately and I added some reflective tape to it and it looked way less like a minion
One problem I had last year was the hydraulic hoses for aiming the chute and the tip at the top of the chute were hard to hold in place and they'd occasionally rub on my rear tires
To fix this I went to the scrap yard and found an old hay rake spring and combined it with (I think) a spring from a trampoline and a bungee cord to make "holder" to hold the lines up out of the way.
Next up was a new aiming mechanism for the chute. In talking with a neighbor who is a fabricator we opted to go with a hydraulic motor turning some custom made gears welded to the chute/snowblower base.
The hydraulic motor, despite already being fairly slow sped, was still way too fast. I had my father thread a pipe nipple and make up a plug for it which I then drilled a hole in to reduce flow
The above hole was actually too big! (5/64) and I stepped it down to 3/64 - which was literally the smallest drill bit I had:
I put all the bits together and ended up with:
With the freshly rebuilt gearbox (new bearings and seals) back in place and a re-conditioned sheer-bolt system on the main driveshaft I was back in action:
