Thoughts on converting lawn tractor snow blower to PT422

[KMA]

Which motor did you use?

The .58 cu in finish mower motor directly coupled to the drive shaft (ala duane's conversion). I won't be surprised if it struggles with heavier snow, but if it handles the deeper, dry stuff it will be worth it. I use an ATV to plow my driveway now and it works pretty well actually, but having the snowblower for certain situations would be nice. Deep powder is hard to clear with a small ATV plow since it spills over top and out the wrong side.

[J_J]

Is that the motor from the PT mower finish deck? I thought the displacement was larger than that.

So what size motor is on the brush hog?

[smilindave]

It should work fine. You just may have to slow down a little.

[KMA]

Okay, I'm pretty much done. The only thing left is spraying some paint on the bare metal. I'll describe what's in the pictures: I used my PT receiver hitch QA plate for this project. It can be still used just fine as the receiver hitch since the snowblower can be easily disconnected from the mounting bracket. The bottom portion of the snowblower also attaches using a hitch type pin on both ends of a brace I made. I tried to keep it as simple as possible. The finish mower's hydraulic motor connects to the drive shaft using love joy style couplers. I also increased the size of the stock skids so it hopefully rides better on my stone/dirt driveway. That's about it. Thanks for all the help! Hopefully I can take a video once the snow falls. Here's the pics:

[woodlandfarms]

Now if you only had snow :-)

[KMA]

Now if you only had snow :-)

Haha... tell me about it. Probably won't happen now that I built this thing.

I don't know whether to wish for snow or not. I'm torn.

[MossRoad]

Haha... tell me about it. Probably won't happen now that I built this thing.

I don't know whether to wish for snow or not. I'm torn.

We're getting pretty good snow last night in Indiana, you should have it by this afternoon.

[KMA]

We're getting pretty good snow last night in Indiana, you should have it by this afternoon.

Yeah, we're getting some weather right now. Unfortunately, you guys must have used it all up because we're only supposed to get an inch or two max. Enough to make it messy, but not enough to plow/snowblow.

[SpringHollow]

Had 6" here before we left for work. My neighbor called and said the drifts are now 4' deep.

Ken

[MossRoad]

Had 6" here before we left for work. My neighbor called and said the drifts are now 4' deep.

Ken

Nice! We have had a weeny winter so far this year. But somehow I still managed to burn up 3 cords of firewood already. (free soft maple... next time I will pass). We had 8" of really fine granular sticky stuff. I looked out in the morning and there was only 2" on our park bench and wood fence top rail so I didn't go out and plow. When we attempted to leave for work I discovered that the snow was such a fine grain that it had slipped through the slats of the bench and fell off the fence top rail like a pile of table salt. Just couldn't hold the slope of the critical angle of repose (I learned about that angle from my dad as a kid watching ant lions. I miss my dad! ). There was 8" of crud on the walks and driveway. No time to plow. Our '93 Suburban was parked outside in 2 wheel drive. If you engage 4wd in that model truck, you have to move it a ways before it really engages. So, I took a chance and blasted down the drive in reverse about 25' and stopped before I got stuck. Then went forward towards the garage and fortunately it engaged. Got out of the drive O.K. to find the plow had made one pass on my side of the street which meant mound in my driveway! Blasted through that only to meet two school buses in my lane. Grrr! Had to go back in and let them pass.

Came home and plowed later in the evening. It was so heavy I had trouble pushing at an angle with the PT425 as it would push the tractor sideways.

Days like that is when I wish I had a blower instead of a plow. Still can't justify the expense, but it is moving up my list of most wanted tools.