Berco Blower part 2

 I might as well finish up the story of the Berco snow blower install. The cold weather has minimized any good riding and soon enough snow will prevent it.

 Our first thought was to just bolt the winch on the front of the tractor frame and sandwich our drop plate behind it. That would have left the winch pulling on the bolt threads rather than relying on the strength of the bolt to support the load. This is our second design for the winch mount plate. It sucks as well because we miscalculated how high the winch needed to be in order to lift the way we wanted. You'll see in the video that the blower needs to roll back and once it binds against the push plate (the piece with the wheels), the whole push arm will come up for travel down the road. I shaped the lift plate (below the winch) to align and hold the push arm so it would stay snug while bouncing down the road. Not shown is a rubber pad where the push arm meets the lift plate and a limit switch that Greg added. The switch prevents the operator from "over winching" the system and potentially bending the shit out of everything.

 Here you see the revamped winch mount. You may also notice we ditched the weak chain and turn buckles that came with the blower. Everyone that worked on the project felt they were going to fail so we made that change.

 On the back side you can see the "quick attach" system. Ignore everything hanging off the three point lift, our attachment is just the standard trailer coupler on a 2" ball.

 Besides what I've shown you, these installs also include mounting controllers to run the blower, additional lighting and all the wiring, breakers, fuses and switches involved. Every unit is just a little bit different and each customer has different needs. I guess that keeps it interesting.

Later.

Workshop Wednesday-Bercomac Snow Blower

 It's that time of year again when we get the trucks and tractors geared up for snow duty. Along with prepping our own equipment, we do a lot of installs for customers. One of those customer installs is a Bercomac snow blower that I'm helping Greg with. This is a self powered snow blower with a 24 hp honda engine on it. It's designed to go on the front of an atv/utv but we think it can easily be adapted to a small utility tractor.

  We just kinda mocked it up today and have a few ideas on how to best adapt it to this particular tractor.

 There are a lot of things to consider including the ability of the machine to hop a curb or go up a steep trailer ramp. We also want to make a support that will allow for lifting the entire blower off the ground and traveling at high speed down the road. I'll detail this in a future post.

  We fired the blower up even though it's not fully mounted to the tractor yet. We had to. It's a gearhead thing. The general consensus was "holy crap". The full 24 hp is used just for a blower so power is not an issue. I think this machine will be impressive.

Later.

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.

Workshop Wednesday-John Deere 5100 part 1

 The boss picked up a new tractor that we'll use this winter for snow plowing. The machine will get a seven foot snowblower hanging off the back of it. For the front we could have added a pusher to the loader bucket but we have found that these tractors are much more maneuverable without the loader bucket. The trick is to find a blade sized right for the machine. We had a few new Blizzard 8611 blades left over and decided to tool this tractor up with one. 8611 means the blade is eight foot six wide and extends to eleven feet. If you continue to extend the wings they will fold forward into a scoop plow. Long time followers will remember when we tooled up a Kubota tractor with similar but smaller plow and another Deere with a Blizzard Speedwing
 I like these kind of projects and this mount will be similar to the Kubota. Usually the type of materials used is determined by what is available in the shop at the time. We had some one inch steel plate looking for a home so the first step was to make a template.

 It's easy to modify a piece of cardboard till it looks like you want. Then it's just a matter of tracing the outline onto the steel plate and attacking it with a torch.

 Not everything gets cut with a torch. I drilled the holes for the mounting bolts with this magnetic drill press. The one inch broach used here bored through the inch thick plate in less than a minute. Nice.

 There was a lot of cutting and welding involved between the last two pics. The main drop plate has a Blizzard mount welded to the bottom and gussets welded to the back.

 There is also a mount on the back for a kicker arm that runs all the way to the rear drawbar mount of the tractor. That black wire loom is the power harness to the plow.

 Here is the completed project. The blade is seen in the eleven foot width and I can't wait to see how productive this machine will be. Compared to a pickup truck these tractors really shine. The operator sits up higher and has great 360 degree visibility. The stock lighting makes it easy to see and be seen. They are a smaller package yet weigh more and have great traction. Overall operating costs are less than a truck too. The only drawback is a truck has the ability to travel down the road much better.
 This may be my blog but I can't take all the credit for this project. The boss supplied his wisdom and vision for what he wanted and also did the paint work. Al did the electrical and helped with the head scratching when we were coming up with a plan for the mount. Troy helped me do the actual building of the mount and Greg installed some tunes in the cab while the tractor was laid up here in the shop. Others involved were Dan who assembled the new blade and Steve, our in house snowplow guru.
 Sorry James, I think your involvement in this project may have been limited to keeping us hydrated when you lost the flip and by letting us use your big impact.
 Next week I'll talk about the plow controller mount in the cab.

Who's Knockin At My Door?

 Ding dong. What the heck? Who's ringing my bell? That bell rings less than once a month, probably cuz I don't play well with others. Anyway I get up out of my lazyboy and find the neighbor standing outside my door along with some dude. This dude was dressed in such a way that he was obviously a biker. I stood there all cleaned up in a dress shirt not looking at all like a grease monkey.
 " You fixed my 30 year old snow blower once. Do you think you could help this guy with his bike?"
 "Certainly. Let's see what you've got."
 The bike was a big twin with points. The electric start was out but it was also a kicker. The concern was that the oil pressure light wasn't coming on when the ignition was flipped on. The bike wouldn't start.
 We'll call him "Rick". Not because I want to protect his identity, no, we'll call him Rick cuz if I remember right that was his name. Rick says he only has twenty miles on a fresh rebuild and I can see there are a few wires hanging out. I know exactly what's going on here cuz I've been there. The project isn't done but the excitement to ride out weighs everything else and you slap it together enough to ride into town. That's cool.
 We're working in the street and it's getting dark. I walk back to get some tools, my glasses and a flashlight. The neighbor supplies some bug dope. After 20 minutes of tossing ideas back and forth along with some inconsistent results with a test light, we determined there must be a bad ground. Sure enough the negative battery cable was loose.
 One or two kicks later and the v-twin roared to life. Rick rode off to enjoy his fresh project. I strolled back into the house and flopped down in my big comfy chair and the neighbor did whatever neighbors do.
 If the doorbell ever rings again I prefer it to be something like this rather than someone shoving their wares or political ideas in my face.

End.

Workshop Wednesday-Snowblower Tweak

 Faithful readers are aware of a project I did adapting a hydraulic broom to a john deere tractor. When the snow is deep we run a blower on the front of that tractor. One of the operators managed to catch a large crack in a sidewalk and bend the blower housing and cutting edge to the point that the auger would no longer turn.
 With a reputation of building things with overkill, I was the perfect guy to handle this repair.

 I should have taken better "before" pics. These don't really express the extent of the damage. The blower is pictured face down. The cutting edge is twisted and the mount is pushed forward. Not only does this wedge the auger from turning but it changes the relationship between the two gears in the chain drive pto.

 After removing the old scraper edge it was easy to see how twisted the housing was. The old scraper was 2" deep and 3/8" thick. Greasy Shop Rag specs called for something much bigger. I plan on using a 1/2" thick hardened cutting edge that's 6" deep. Ignore that piece of black shiny steel in the above pic. I changed plans mid swing and went another direction.

 With the new scraper edge in place it was time to straighten the sheet metal. I made this little fixture to adapt to a porta power ram. You can see everything to the left is nice and straight and everything to the right still needs tweaking.

 The blower is upside down in this pic and you see the new scraper bolted in place. I added the black piece of angle iron across the bottom and back of the housing. This will help prevent the housing from bowing like it did before. The black diamond plate pieces on the ends are something I made a few years ago. John deere offers something like this as an upgrade. I don't understand why they make this shit so weak, charge a fortune for it and then ask for more money to make it as strong as it should have been from the start.

 And one final pic to put it all into perspective. You can see the black angle iron along the back bottom edge. It ties into the center mount plates and the black end plates. If they hit something now they will probably break the windshield with their face as the tractor comes to a screeching halt.
 Now all we need is snow. It's been a slow winter.