Hi All,
I'm just posting a few "follow-up" observations after getting some more snowblower seat time this morning on about 15" of snow.
As I stated before, my 3 pt. Woods snowblower is designed with a sizeable gap...I'll have to actually measure it some day, but it's at least 3/4" between the impeller tips and the shroud. What I noticed is that the snow packed between the impleller tips and the shroud forming a "seal" of sorts.
It had no problem throwing the snow today. I don't usually have the deflector pointing too far upward, but it easily launced some snow 50+ feet when I did. (If I tried for maximum distance, my neighbors might start getting upset. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif That was for the light powdery stuff. Some of the ice chunks went much further, may 100+ feet?)
I think one advantage of the "built in gap" is that small stones don't get wedged between the impeller and the shroud. After several uses, there's still no signs of wear whatsoever on the impeller shroud. I have a paved driveway, but there's always little pebbles and chunks of asphalt laying around somewhere that get launched.
Anyway, it worked great! I did my drive and a couple of neighbors and about 350' of sidewalk. The sidewalk was a real workout: over 3' deep in some spots, very heavy stuff from the snow plows... but the mighty Kubota made slow and steady progress. It even cut through some snow banks that have been there for over a month, hard and ice encrusted.
Another comment: I strongly suggest that anyone planning to put a snowblower on a tractor get a tractor with either hydro or creeper gears. For deep, compacted drifts, it had to slow down to a crawl. When the going got easier, I could speed up substantially. Seems like I was always adjusting the speed of the tractor. Hydro allows those changes effortlessly.
Blowing snow has by far been the heaviest load I've placed on my tractor. Most of my uses don't require PTO speed. Blowing snow does, and when the snow is heavily packed, it has to work. Hard.
Being a 3 pt. hitch mount I don't really have too much trouble "driving backwards". My back condition, fortunately, allows me enough painfree flexible twisting to watch what I'm doing. However, I still get a bit confused when backing. I keep thinking of the snowblower as being a "trailer" and steering it as such, only to find "it's going the wrong way" and I have to correct. I'm not as bad as I was the first time, but it still takes some getting used to.
Oh, I envy all of you that have a snowblower AND a cab. You're lucky. One of these days I'll have to rig up something temporary that will work with the folding ROPS. In the mean time, I just use my trusty safety glasses and try to be aware of which way the wind blows.
Just passing on some of my experiences. I'm glad I had another opportunity to blow some more snow. If I had a cab around me, I don't think I'd ever want to come back in the house.
~Rick