Snow Equipment Owning/Operating MK Martin Snowblower not shooting far??

[Phil48]

"phil was that pic taken while the blower was running?"

Indeed!

Phil

 

[Dutch445]

thought so, couldn't see the impellar, just a blur!

 

[jim_wilson]

Keep it up at the rated 540rpm and make sure there is not any rust in the chute and the impeller clearance is no more them 1/4" to 3/8".

On my Meteor snow blower there is a 3/4"-7/8" gap around the impeller. When I get time I plan on bolting on old heavy belting to compensate for the clearance and act as a sacrificial wear piece.

Any idea of how drastically having rust in the chute and/or having sloppy clearances around the impeller can affect throwing distance?

I have a 54" Loftness - that I picked up a few years back. It was setup to run on a Bobcat or something like that - so I had to weld up a 3pt mount for it to get it to work on the tractor. After doing the work - I tried to use it on my old BX23 - but it was the end of the season and there was only about 6" of snow on the ground when I tried it - and the throwing distance was disappointing - only about 6" feet or so. I bought a B3200 last spring - and when the blizzard was approaching us this past Friday - I figured this would be a great test of the blower to see if it actually works. Well I got pretty much the same results - I'm only seeing the snow go maybe 6-10ft at best - I did get one brief blast where I was able to throw about 20 feet, but it was definitely not "the usual". The inside of the blower is reasonably rusty - as is the chute. I don't recall what the clearance on the impeller is.

I'm debating whether I can "fix" this one and refurb it to have a nice blower for cheap money - or whether I should just dump the thing and look for a better unit. After using it during the blizzard I think I like the concept of a rear mounted blower - I just would like to have one that actually works.

 

[curvecrazy]

Jim... I might be just the guy to help you as I have been where you are and now.............

I've got a 60 inch back up style Inland SA-60 blower I picked up used that blew the snow disappointing too. It's a well built unit and I really would prefer not to spend a bunch $$$$ on a newer and lighter construction blower. So I did a lot of reading and some fiddling too. Well, a lot more of both than I care to admit. And the time spent speculating, considering, re-considering and so on and so forth. LOL As received, it was pretty scored up inside the fan housing and the fan pretty grounged up. Needless say prior owner was a horses *** and put probably several tons of gravel through it. So, I probably had about 5-6ft throw distance on the inside and maybe 13ft throw distance at the furthest point. This is as you suppose experimenting with varied deflector angles but always with the tractor spun up at full 540PTO rpm. I got busy removing all the rust first. In the blower housing, in the fan housing, and on the fan too. Seemed to make a small difference but not too much. Keeping in mind its hard to tell sometimes where you're at and where you been cause I don't have unlimited amounts of snow to play with here. You clean up what you got, you see how it works, you make mods and wait for more snow to try out your mods. Or course, temperatures and snow consistencies they do not stay the same from one to the next so you have to do your best to estimate. I then painted the whole inside of the blower with the tractor supply graphite slip paint. This solved my problem completely... now blowing all snow and slush too several hundred feet!!! Ha ha ha. Kidding with you. No, I wish that was the case cause due to my driveway layout config I have to get the snow way out due to the steep slope on the uphill side and the house on the downhill side. [note to thems paying attention here... do build your driveway on the downhill side so you can blow the snow off it downhill and it will not come back at melt time fyi ++, and thereby you will not need to blow the snow hundreds of feet to move it out your way but I've digressed = I did not build the house fwiw LOL]

Anyways. The slip paint did improve the performance slightly. And really only slightly. I was probably getting 8-10ft closest and maybe 15-16ft furthest out. Snow conditions depending. More reading. More thinking. I read about Clarence's impeller kit. Decided to make my own impeller kit with thin angle iron. Considering all sorts of uglyness scenarios should there be "play" in the mechanism and the fan tip extenders hitting down. I discovered, to my dismay, that my impeller housing is not "round". That's right. The top past the outlet chute is tighter than the 90 degrees directly prior to chute location read from bottom to 90 degrees higher. So I was aggravated. I had the option of modifying the fan housing [opening it up] to accomodate my fan tip extensions at the maximum length, or, I could install fan extenders only long enough to "clear" the tight area at the top of the fan housing. Grrrrrrr. I chose the latter and was surprised again to discover that not only was my fan housing not round, it was also not square - if you will??? - from front to back. Huh??? That's right folks. So I did the best I could with the fan extensions leaving about 1/16th inch space at the top for clearance. Fine right? Well, as you rotate the fan around to the point just prior to throw point the fan extensions were then not square to that surface, creating a sort of effect where the back of the fan blade tip was say 3/16th clearance and the front [toward tractor] was say 1/16th clearance! A mess? Yes.

I took this out and tried it on cold fluff snow. Well, the results spoke for themselves. Even with the crooked interface at the final throwpoint entering the chute I literally doubled my throwing distance. I was seeing the snow out at the furthest point in the 31-33ft range paced off.

Again, back I went to fiddling. I was not happy with that crooked interface of fan to fan housing. So, I removed the fan and again modified the fan tip extenders to as close as possible allowing a hair for mechanical clearance say 1/16th inch front to back and square to the fan housing which at that point before the chute is actually square. I then had my fan hitting my fan housing at the top tight point. So I took out the trusty cutting wheel and started modifying the upper housing at the pinch point. Did you ever try to bend formed steel by making cuts and pounding? Trust me, it takes more cuts[by number and length too] than you intended before you will finally get the "clearance" you desire. Which I did on all counts fwiw. LOL I ended up measuring exactly where the fan runs in the fan housing both front and back and making parallel cuts on both sides. Then made a perpendicular cut at the top chute side so that I could pound/bend the housing out away the necessary distance to accommodate my fan tip extenders. I just bent it out far enough and left it there. Figured go try it and see. Hoping for better naturally. I bought the blower to move the snow out and away... not to **** around. Which it seems that's all I've done since getting the **** thing. So right off the bat, warmed up the tractor, set blower on ground, engaged PTO at low rpm and started winding it up. Boom!! Kidding again. Anyways, it coulda worked out that way had I not throttled it down cause the fan housing metal I bent up was now oscillating up and down and was nipping noisily at my fan blade extenders. Ouch, no good there. Shut it all down as the wise man he don't ever work on any energized PTO anything do he?? Found a suitible tool to push in there firmly held in place underneath the chute mount to hold the metal flap back. The plan would be to fix this permanent should the mod work. This will work for now to keep the fan clear.

Went out and tried it on some old snow we had laying around. Not much snow, maybe 4-5 inches which had been around for some days on the yard and had settled if you will. Snow terms only those familiar with snow and clearing it might understand. LOL Well, the blower is now throwing the snow even better out to about 35-37ft outside distance [furthest point measured by pacing off.. my boots exactly a foot long fwiw] at PTO rpm or slightly higher throttled up.

So, I should be happy right? Agreed. But I am not. What I have you can see in the attached video I took. A blizzard is happening all around this blower. Even with no wind, I am getting covered with this powder snow. You can see it in the video. It swirls around especially at the start of your run but ongoing. May as well wear a helmet and I know some do. Its aggravating, because it covers up my instruments, makes the steering wheel slippery and makes for a mess after I'm done cleaning up the tractor/blower/plow. fwiw My conclusion, is that like everything else about this old time [suspect early to mid 70's but Inland blowers are long since gone so if someone knows please confirm???] blower, the chute is a poor design. It's wide at the bottom to overlay the square fan housing discharge. Yet, when overlaying it, they did not put the round chute mount far enough to the outside to completely cover the square fan housing discharge. Which means there are overlays of the round chute housing at the corners of the square fan housing. Common sense tells you this can't improve flow ?? The chute itself is also wide here and as per the picture takes round to a squarish final discharge point. Hardly the smoothest or most streamlined design. I can see on the chute inner body itself where all the gravel hits it, courtesy of the prior A$$hat owners antics there is visible pitting. The chute comes up at an angle instead of straight. The snow comes up, hauling ***** into there, hits the chute about 4-5 or so inches up from the blower body, then follows the contour of the angled chute itself to the top discharge where it is then greeted by the deflector which too, itself, is not a smooth transition but mounted on a hinge behind so it sits say about 3/4" back from the chute itself so instead of deflecting the snow smoothly it gives it one last "hit" if you will in the direction you suppose you want it to go. All this, I assume, is leading me to "wear" a lot of snow. And I am not happy. LOL

I have now put in a thin piece of plastic in the discharge chute which extends from the base where it pivots up to about 8 inches shy of the deflector interface. Its wedged in there good and I mocked it up with clamps on the top underneath the deflector to hold it in place. I know, red neck central. LOL My hope is that this, by removing much of the open space transition in the bottom of the chute and making the transition of the discharge smoother and slippery"er" will maximize the snows velocity as the fan throws it into the chute. Of course this is thin like 32nd of an inch plastic sheet and may well explode the first time I try to use it [ I hope not]. At the deflector, I removed it completely from its mount on top the chute, slid it forward and fastened it in place with more clamps. Experimented a little bit with deflector angle and found I could achieve the same angle as experimental best before by moving the bar adjuster 1 more click down in that position. Now there is a smooth transition from chute to chute deflector.

Why all of this nonsense? Good question. I just wanna blow the **** snow far and minimize the blizzard effect. Geeze! Round and round we go how much time I've wasted with this nobody really knows. And now I'm here waiting for more snow to see if my latest diddlings actually improved anything.

Below is the youtube link to my prior performance described. This is with the fan extenders, housing modified and old graphite paint from the prior year which means some rust coming through and I smoothed it as best as possible with scotchbrite. These do not show any chute improvements but you for **** sure can see the swirl effect I'm dealing with fyi. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what fixed my blower since I progressed in steps. You might find that just the fan kit would get it done for you but I suspect if you have rusty going on you may wish to delve further. I think if I was you I would be inclined to try Rustlok paint from West Marine instead of graphite slip paint. Put it on right over the rust or with minimal prep cause it needs to have something to hold on to IME. I think it would stick, be durable and provide slip too but you want 3 coatings of this Rustlok to keep the rust away proper and follow the instructions to the letter including exact cure times which in the cold is about 2.5 hours between coats. I would be curious how well that works. Mines already painted up [just did it fresh again to be sure on housing and chute too fwiw] with graphite slip paint so no way Rustlok is sticking to that short of sandblasting it which I am not getting into......... LOL

Simplicity 9523 Allis 5020 Inland SA-60 Snowblower Modified - YouTube

 

[5picker]

Any idea of how drastically having rust in the chute and/or having sloppy clearances around the impeller can affect throwing distance?

I have a 54" Loftness - that I picked up a few years back. It was setup to run on a Bobcat or something like that - so I had to weld up a 3pt mount for it to get it to work on the tractor.

Jim... question...
Is the Loftness a hydraulic driven blower or does it run from a PTO shaft?
Some of those hydraulic driven units needed pretty good flow so not knowing the specs on your B3200, 'maybe' it's not turning fast enough if you are powering it hydraulically? Just a thought.
Also, some tractors are equipped with 750 PTO RPM's so the implements for them are designed to run at that speed. I've heard from others on here where they have purchased a 750 RPM blower and were running it on a 540 RPM machine and were disappointed. Again, I don't know the specs of what you have so I'm just throwing caution to the wind.

Certainly rust has an effect on slipperyness. (Ha-ha ...is that a word?) but I would think impeller clearance is more critical. Someone on here sells impeller repair kits that have rubber conveyor belt like pads that bolt on to improve performance. A search will find them.

One other note... I've found with my LuckNow, that a mere 6" of snow feeding into it just doesn't blow very far. Give it a good foot of snow or full intake and it blows 25-30 feet.

 

[curvecrazy]

Keep in mind the snow I'm blowing in that video is minimal and there's a pile you can't see that I hand shoveled from the concrete pad in front of the garage during repeated small cold powder snowfalls. It was pretty packed but not wet. Inland blower cuts right through it combined with the 22 PTO hp 2 cylinder diesel which is unfazed. You notice the swirl effect from moment 1 and it just keeps coming. If there's wind you best plan accordingly cause your gonna be wearing it.

The pictures are from the prior year with more snow. I have since painted the plow as you see in the video. The clearance I had at the fan/housing was at least 3/8ths of an inch before. Now its 1/16th approx. I have considered modding my chute to extend the square housing outlet up higher up into the chute itself hoping to maintain flow and reduce turbulence. I will see how my current chute mods add up, if it will snow again here. I have high hopes for this thing but I may end up making another chute for it depending out of sheet metal welded up. if you go to Northern Tool or AgroTrend and look at their blowers it would seem to me a modest undertaking to make one of those chutes which you notice has a smooth transition up to the top.

Better still for maximum distance might be to cut out an area on the fan housing below the outlet chute at say 7-9 O-clock position, weld a straight outlet there so the snow would just come straight out and fly away hopefully far. LOL Seems to me the whole idea of channeling snow way up and then deflecting it in another direction isn't the most efficient way but of course that "is" what allows directional control of discharge. By directing it out the side at a given angle you are then locked into that angle and direction too unless you make that outlet closeable say. I see some videos of snowblowers out there that rotate the drum it looks like and they do have a chute but the operator seems to be able to channel the snow out the sides direct bypassing the formal chute itself and the videos I have seen "Boy does it rip the snow out that side!!!" Of course, that may have been done at a higher PTO speed. I am confined to 540+ a little PTO rpm.

I was also considering constructing a step up mule drive using chains, sprockets, pillow blocks and shafts to increase rpms to say 800rpm or so. But that would be kind of an undertaking.

I could be happy with this blower as it currently sits if I could get it to blow cleaner with less swirl. Failing that I can wear one of my full face motorcycle helmets with shield. Anyone have any ideas or educate me and the rest on snow flow dynamics? Does small square into larger round chute create a venturi effect like a carb and create turbulence? How about a chute that is square and stays square? You would then lose directional except for straight back or straight out to either side if you mounted it turnable. Anywhere in between it would have major obstruction by design. Every manufacturer gets around this by going square to round and then usually back to square at the discharge right? I know the older Lucknow's had that large round discharge that went right up smooth bend right to the outlet. They were blue colored and I'm sure a few of you have seen them. fwiw

 

[curvecrazy]

With regard to blowers and designed rpms. My research leads me to believe most 3pt tractor intended snowblowers are set up with a straight through gearbox meaning 540 PTO speed at tractor PTO equals 540 rpms at fan. I believe this is largely due to the cost of gearboxes to "up" spin. Naturally, if your tractor has a 2 or 3 speed PTO option you can spin it faster. This is nice cause you can, by spinning it faster in say 1000rpm PTO, go slower speedwise with a gear driven[non hydrostat drive] tractor while spinning the blower itself faster. Ideally you would reach a point where say BercoMac is at with their blowers where they spin em so fast it sounds like an airplane propeller and if you wanna see snow thrown check out one of them in the videos. There's a video of a guy with a John Deere lawn tractor throwing snow over a large barn with one. Holy SZit! Or check out the Honda walk behind blower videos for some distance envy. Mmmmmmm. Thing is, to get a diesel to rip it like that you need more rpm which you could achieve with a faster PTO or say a front driven blower off a belt driven mule drive or even just a faster spinning Kubota like mid mount PTO. But needless to say its expensive to get that done through a 540PTO speed tractor and the blowers seem to all be designed for that saving examples such as Jacobsen and a few others mentioned. fwiw

Seems to me you can slice this and dice it how you will. Ultimately, it comes down to fan housing clearance and efficiency, chute efficiency and rpm. I would think rpm could ***** both fan housing clearance and chute efficiency. I don't think the bercomac blowers have that tight of a tolerance in the fan housing but they sure do spin. The Honda's I am told are tight straight away but they are spinning off a 3600rpm +/- engine speed with a smaller diameter fan. As mentioned fan tip speed comes into play and if you spin a small fan fast enough.......

Just thinking out loud here and please correct if I am wrong.

 

[jim_wilson]

Jim... question...
Is the Loftness a hydraulic driven blower or does it run from a PTO shaft?
Some of those hydraulic driven units needed pretty good flow so not knowing the specs on your B3200, 'maybe' it's not turning fast enough if you are powering it hydraulically? Just a thought.
Also, some tractors are equipped with 750 PTO RPM's so the implements for them are designed to run at that speed. I've heard from others on here where they have purchased a 750 RPM blower and were running it on a 540 RPM machine and were disappointed. Again, I don't know the specs of what you have so I'm just throwing caution to the wind.

Certainly rust has an effect on slipperyness. (Ha-ha ...is that a word?) but I would think impeller clearance is more critical. Someone on here sells impeller repair kits that have rubber conveyor belt like pads that bolt on to improve performance. A search will find them.

One other note... I've found with my LuckNow, that a mere 6" of snow feeding into it just doesn't blow very far. Give it a good foot of snow or full intake and it blows 25-30 feet.

It's being run from the 540 RPM PTO shaft on the rear of the B3200. My memory is a little hazy on this - but as I remember when I bought the thing the guy said it was being run on a skidsteer - and it was setup with a speed reducer or quickener on the PTO stub on the snowblower itself. The mount it had on it was not for a 3 point hitch - and honestly my memory of what the mount was setup like is sort of hazy because I cut that mount apart and used the steel to make up something I could use to mount to the 3pot on the tractor. I do remember talking with Loftness - because I got the PTO driveshaft directly from them - and I remember them telling me that what I had was the same basic blower as a 3pt mount PTO blower - so by putting the driveshaft on I would be able to run the thing off the back of the tractor.

Somewhere I thought I had copy of the manual for this thing - I'm looking for it now, maybe from that I can find out what the specs are and what speed it should be run at.

After reading curvecrazy's post(s) - I went out and took a closer look at the blower - and discovered that the impeller housing is not quite round. The Loftness has a four bladed impeller - it's a 20" diameter x 7" deep housing - and there appears to be about 1/2" of clearance between the impellers and the housing at the top and sides - but at the bottom - there's about 1/4" or less. So adding some sort of extensions to the blades on the impeller to take up the gap is probably a no-go.

What I was thinking I might be able to do is find some sort of plastic - and line the inside of the impeller housing with it - and somehow space the plastic to take up the gap around the entire diameter - so the blades have a consistent gap around the housing.

To be honest I may just sell this Loftness - and just go get something new - that works. This thing could turn into a project - and the worst part of it is that the only way to test it out is to have enough snow to play with - which might mean what I end up with is literally a multi year project of tinker - try - tinker - try - until I get the thing to work. I've already got too many **** projects as it is so I probably don't need to add another one.

After using the thing in this one storm - I've come to the conclusion that I like the idea of the blower - and I don't mind using it on the back of the tractor - I just want one that works and chucks the snow a decent distance.

Curvecrazy - thanks a lot for the excellent post. You gave me a lot to think about - if it wasn't for you posting it, I wouldn't have thought to look and see if the impeller housing was actually round - turns out it looks like it isn't.

 

[curvecrazy]

Well Jim, I'm glad the post seems to have done you some good and expanded your thought process. I posted it partly to help you and partly to help others in the future who will probably end up with these Inland SA model blowers which basically suck. I mean, its not that they suck necessarily. If you had say a 1/2 mile long driveway, across a field or through a flat area of say woods, you could clear your driveway perfectly well and efficient with one as received. Because all you would need to do is throw the snow 6-8 feet one way and its outta your way and things are good. The blower does move major snow. I'm talking volume here. But to get it to throw far has been a challenge. I really hope I can get the chute squared away cause I really don't want a snowshower every time I use the thing. Anyways, there will be many with these Inland blowers searching for answers, of which, in my searching I found none, other than the engineer at Meteor was well familiar with Inland saying simply that they are overbuilt weightwise and have poor throw. LOL Simple enough. Tell me that now, with my inland throwing it about as far as his product and built not 400lbs light weight but closer to 800 and mine will outlast me and the next no doubt. I like well built but I sure wish it was smarter built and that might be why you would buy a newer blower.

I envy your 4 blade fan which seems to me to have more potential than my 3 blade but I have about a 22 inch fan size. Shrugs.

Keep in mind it may be possible with your blower to modify the location of the fan gearbox and the fan itself. If you were to do so, it might gain you some movement in the right direction allowing longer fan extensions while still maintaining clearance. Just saying. It might then require attention to the auger shaft to make sure that stays straight. I considered moving my gearbox by adding or removing washers on the 4 mount bolts or slotting the mount holes to adjust it say. I did loosen mine and pushed it as far over as the oversized bolt holes allowed in my best direction. It might even buy you the space you need to get relative evenness all round your fan housing.

I too considered making a lining of plastic to achieve evenness all round. Gave up on the idea thinking a good way to fasten the plastic securely. Best I could come up with was countersunk holes with possibly rivets. But as you know, the tendency with plastic especially when cold is for it to stress and crack. I see bad things that way coming fwiw!

You could also get the right thicknesses of steel sheet and tack weld it in but not sure if you can do that yourself and having others do it at $80 an hour can bite quickly. And even doing it yourself it could be tricky cause the distance can vary quite a lot as you go around.

Word to the wise. If you are analyzing/looking at one of these blowers, put a good strong magnet on the fan blade such that it contacts/glances the housing at the tightest point. You can then slowly rotate it and inspect as you go. Plot it out and see what you got and what you need. It sounds simple to just eyeball it but I found it a real ***** and anything but simple or illuminating. Using a flat surface magnet 4 inches wide and about 1 inch deep really helped me out in that respect. fwiw

My take on your blower from my own experience here [many hours with my similar unit] is that if you can minimize the fan/housing clearance in the 90 degrees from the fan housing bottom to the 90 degree point right at the chute then make sure you don't have bad rust which will stick things for sure and your blower should be blowing snow decent. You may or may not be scared away of modifying the housing itself but if the clearance is 1/4 on the bottom then figure out where exactly it is what and consider cutting that similar to how I did mine to get yourself the space you need. You could cut two cuts parallel to the rotation of the fan itself, and a perpendicular cut to open it up and possibly add some sheet metal to make the gap about the same there as it is the rest the way round. Then you could install the fan extenders as long as possible due to your new found/made clearance on the bottom.

Or just make as little a project out of it as possible if that is your situation. Just put in the angle iron fan extender pieces as long as you can manage given your space limitations and take it out and try it. You might be surprised the improvement. And it might not be as good as it could be, but good enough for your needs.

You didn't mention if you watched my video or not but that was with not much snow at all and with a better housing fill ratio that alone might largely fix the swirl plume phenomena. Or others might chime in here. It may just be the nature of the beast in powder/dry snow.

Interestingly enough, I did a lot of experimenting with chute direction wondering which blows furthest. My first thought was that aiming the chute in the direction the fan spins [across the blower itself] would maximize the throw distance. It didn't work out that way with my blower. Still not quite sure why. Mine seems to blow best right straight to the back or at an angle looking back over your left shoulder at say between 1 and 2 O-clock. Like others have mentioned, slower isn't necessarily better if your machine can handle it the more you can stuff in there without pushing it the better these seem to work.

I wonder why makers of these would not make the housings round? And why not tight tolerances on the fan/housing? Are they afraid of users trashing them with gravel should tolerances be tight? Strikes me kind of sad people like myself going round round with these things to get em to work right when the manufacturer should have done that to begin with. Just saying.

 

[curvecrazy]

I was kind of hoping for some commentary here. Hoping others might have some ideas from personal experience.

I have now modified my chute somewhat. I put plastic sheet in the bottom to smooth the transition from fan housing output to chute initiation. The gap there was somewhat large. There was also rust cause I slip painted it about 18months ago so another coat of TSC graphite slip paint. On the chute deflector I removed the rod and moved the deflector back to even with the chute body itself. A smooth transition now instead of the step as it was from the manufacturer. The idea is to make the flow as smooth and even as possible to get the snow to "mix" as little as possible while moving up and out. I maintain moving it out the side would be the most efficient but that would limit your options for "where" you put the snow.

I am considering putting in a piece of sheet[metal or plastic] at the base of the chute to maybe half way up to reduce that open area. It might make sense to put that in and leave a hole at the bottom the chute for airflow. Or no? Sort of like one of those lawnmower deck bag setups [the non power assist variety fwiw] where they don't make it fully enclosed but add in an air diffuser sort of thing to allow air into the system midway along the routing which then improves the flow. Or at least it appears to me to do so. My tracvac does not have any such hole but it does have an 8hp motor sucking away....

So it snowed here. About 6 inches out there and I have the tractor engine warmed up with my outdoor spotlight setup. Consists of two 120 watt outdoor spot/flood bulbs placed on either side of the oil pan of the tractor and turned on for several hours before startup. fwiw. A laymans block heater. I also put a bed comforter over the tractor hanging down to the floor basically to keep the heat in from the lights. Seems to work well for me. Better than starting it up cold..... So going out to see if my mods made a difference. Not that it would appear anyones interested. LOL