zmansmac
Gold Member
I had my 200 foot driveway asphalted in May of this year. In past seasons I used a fairly lightweight plow that I added gauge wheels to and mounted on my loader arms. I was able to curl down to have the cutting edge scrape the cement apron of the garage and then curl up to get the edge up to 1 inch off the ground when doing the gravel part. The gauge wheels worked great even when the gravel wasn't frozen. Now that I don't have any gravel to deal with I bought a new 6 foot plow. It's quite a bit heavier; I'd estimate 450 pounds including the mount I made to go on the loader arms. It has a nice set of cast shoes which are about 6 inches wide by 5 inches long. I welded 1/2 inch steel to the bottom of each shoe as a sacrificial wear surface. Since this is a bottom edge trip plow (Meyer Diamond series) the 2 trip springs on each side are very near the ends of the plow which would make it challenging to add gauge wheels. So my question for those of you who plow asphalt drives is whether or not you think these shoes would any damage to my drive, especially considering that it's only 6 months old, as I understand they should be adjusted to keep the edge slightly off the surface. The loader would be in the float position so no extra downward force.