It...is....ALIVE!

[Gumby83]

I FINALLY got a chance to try out my snow blade after finishing it 2 weeks ago... it works!!! :cool2: We got about 5 inches of light, powdery snow today - exactly what I wanted to test it out.

I need to adjust the blade so it's pitched a little more forward on the bottom end (and still fabricate a weight bracket) but otherwise I think it's going to work just great! :banana: I'm thinking of also finding a squeegee kit for it - my dad said they bought a squeegee kit for their blade at work (mounted on a JD tractor) and it really cleans the sidewalks well. But all in good time - for now I'm just gonna enjoy it. :biggrin:

 

[JD is best]

Great job! it sounds like you worked really hard on that

 

[bt3]

Awesome!

Congrats. Nothing like a completed homebrew project that WORKS!

Reminds me, I have a plow blade for my Yardman Lawn Tractor that I need to sell (cheap) to some lucky guy. I have not had that tractor in 8 years, and I just keep forgetting to post the plow blade on Craigslist!

I'm sure the right guy can modify it to work on just about anything.

 

[Gumby83]

Thanks guys!

But I did learn today that it's still got some bugs to work out.

The shoes I had on the bottom of the blade just wanted to drag and scrape and make it a PITA to move forward without holding up the whole mower. So I removed them and I tried to rig the blade to "hover" a half inch above the ground by adding stops to the bracket. It worked until the blade snagged a hidden mound of frozen dirt, and then the blade pushed right past the stops and got jammed up. So I got it back into the shop and corrected it. The rest of the time I was pushing snow, I had to use my foot on the lever as a kind of control mechanism for the pitch of the blade.

And like I said - I need wheel weights or a bracket. It still pushed surprisingly well and I didn't get any indication that I was overworking the transaxle - it probably did it some good to get a real workout.

I think I'd like to get a squeegee kit on it soon. I think that will provide the correction in pitch & wear edge I need to get this thing working proper.