FEL and rear blade, best method for snow plowing?

[Mcaveman]

This all new to me, I just pit the 3 pt on for first time and mounted a 5' rear blade.

Do I plow in reverse or straight with fel and let blade to final clean up?

I'm such a greenhorn, or should I say orange horn!

 

[Fallon]

I have a land pride back blade with a hydraulic angle I've use a bit & just finished mounting a small truck plow to a SSQA plate to go on the loader. Only had a chance to use my new toy once though.

Running over the snow & using the back blade worked well. Constantly turning my head was annoying & it was a good excuse for a project for my loader mount plow.

Fundamentally a tractor is a pulling machine, not a pushing machine though. The loader plow sticks out quite a ways so I expect will have more leverage to push me sideways. I have had that issue a bit with the rear plow, but not in the 1 lighter snow on the loader plow.

If you run into something with the loader plow, you are more likely to break something I believe, although truck & loader plows usually have trip springs that let the blade jump clear or obstructions. A 3pt hitch is going to be a bit stronger in tension than compression. You can turn a 3pt blade backwards & push backwards, but it will be much easier to break things that way.

Look at the snow forum here, lots of snow handling discussion there.

 

[Ronovt]

Greetings from northern VT. SC2400 with scraper blade. I find the best for medium snow is the scraper blade out and tractor in reverse, then clean up the piles with the FEL. If you have a hard surface you are clearing then the FEL is fine to use. I like the cleaner look from the blade.

 

[94BULLITT]

This all new to me, I just pit the 3 pt on for first time and mounted a 5' rear blade.

Do I plow in reverse or straight with fel and let blade to final clean up?

I'm such a greenhorn, or should I say orange horn!

It depends how deep the snow is. If the snow is not very deep I would drive foward with the blade down. I also like to run with the cutting edge facing the opposite way I am going when plowing on gravel. If the snow is too deep or slippery I would drive in reverse and push the snow. If it is really deep then I would use the loader and dip the snow. I plow in high range at full throttle.

 

[oosik]

I clear my mile long gravel driveway, mail box area and yard with a rear blade. The only time I reverse the rear blade and drive in reverse is in the yard when I going close to buildings. Otherwise, down the driveway the blade is offset and angled and I'm traveling 5-7 mph so the snow will be bladed as far off the driven way as possible. It is very rare that I ever need to use the FEL for clearing snow. I will only plow after the surface is frozen hard. Otherwise, you will remove a lot of the gravel.

 

[Thomas]

Good advice given from others.
Just be extra careful when pushing in reverse,no trip springs.

Suggest you try different clean ways to see what your comfortable with....each there own.

 

[SLIMSHADIE]

Depends on snow, last year I drove forward most of the time. Which is saying a lot for the snow we had. Didn't care for driving in reverse. I may of had to hit it a couple of times. If the load stopped the tractor, I would just spin around and clean it up with the loader, then restart. A couple big snows, I had the loader roughly up 6 inches to help clear some of the snow before it hit the rear blade. The approaches were easier to do in reverse for me. That was my first year so I'm still new to it.
This year I bought a front snowblower, its a new ballgame again. So far I like that. Nice and slow but I'm only touching it once and when I get the hang of it, it seems to cut my time in half from plowing. I still use the rear blade for clearing the approaches, mailbox and sneaking it into the garage since my BX is to tall.

 

[dodge man]

I always driver forward with the rear blade angled. That's good up to a few inches of snow, but when it gets deep, say over 6", then its the FEL and that's slow.

 

[donk2014]

When it is deep I use the back blade angled, just keep moving it over into windrows and then bucket up the windrows. I know when the wind rows are deep enough when I can not straddle them.