Workshop Wednesday-John Deere 5100 part 3

 Regular readers will remember back in November a post about making a mount and installing a snow plow on a tractor. I had a follow up post about the controller bracket. Well just last week we finally got some snow to try it out when Mother Nature hit us with nearly a foot of the heavy wet stuff.

 I'm happy to report that the mount held up well.

 Now, how about everything else that broke in the three days we spent cleaning up those pennies from heaven. On day one the loader in the pic lost first and second gears. We had to remove the pusher because it was too much of a strain on the trans running in only third gear. Luckily those gears reappeared on day two. Must be an electrical gremlin.

 My truck left me stranded. I was plowing and pushed on the brake pedal only to have it stay to the floor. I bet you think I lost my brakes. Brake fluid everywhere? Wrong. All I had were brakes. When I shut off the engine the brake pedal came back up. When I started the engine the pedal pulled down tight to the floor and applied the brakes. Turns out the hydro assist from the power steering must have a bad seal or valve and was activating fully. Thanks to Al for figuring out all we had to do was remove the serpentine engine belt and drive the truck back to the shop.

 I found one of our sidewalk tractors with a tire off the rim and the snow blower disconnected from it. I'm still not real sure how that all came about. Something happened to the other sidewalk tractor but it was repaired in a few hours and I never asked what broke. I'm responsible for nine guys and our largest plowing account. Sometimes you just need to look at results and ignore the pesky little details. Two guys with walk behind snowblowers running down a sidewalk in a staggered pattern can get a lot of work done. I didn't know it but one of those blowers threw a track. It's nice having a crew that knows how to deal with crap rather than getting beat up by problems. The backhoe had two hoses break at different times. Oh, and the john deere in the pic broke a u-joint on the pto shaft. Did I mention that the salter froze up on the second truck I ran? It's always something.

 We normally don't have this many problems. Everything just decided to test us this time around, but I wouldn't trade this storm for a sunny day. We needed snow. It's good for everybody and really helps the local economy.