Snow Equipment Owning/Operating Snow: If I had a Blade would it handle 28"?

[Trev]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

Question for you guys who hook a blade to your FEL: do you use any sort of spring-trip device for when you hit something solid hidden under the snow?

I find that often I hit something like a ridge of solid ice, or even sometimes a curb, and the spring-trip on the blade keeps the impact to a minimum. I've heard people say you should always have a spring-trip on snow blades. Do you run into any problems not having one?

Also, my JD dealer told me the FEL is really not geometrically designed for serious pushing.. and that the JD front blade was a straight push from the frame. Anyone had any problems pushing with a FEL and causing damage?

Tks,
Bob

 

[WVBill]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

Bob: I adapted mine from a blade I had on my Craftsman Garden Tractor. It does have spring-trip. The whole story is In this thread

 

[skent]

Re: Snow: If I had a Blade would it handle 28\"?

2800 Feet to clear, thru the woods was less snow (18") but no where to stack it. The flat open area had some drifting to 40" deep. Total time on my hour meter over the last two days: 13 Hours. That comes to an average of about 3 and a half feet per minute. Seemed like I'd never get done. But then again, there were people out there in worse shape than us. Four miles over a dairy barn fell in but thankfully no cows were killed. Neighbors and friends and firefighters worked the entire day to free all.

 

[winchman]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

Bob,

The truck plow that I have mounted on my bucket came with 5 trip springs and was 96" wide. I cut the width down to 80" and removed 3 of the trip springs. The blade now trips when I think it should. I have plowed a bunch with my bucket-mounted plow this winter and have no fear of hurting my FEL.
I love this set-up and having the ability to use just my bucket in less than 2 minutes. I understand your dealers concern, but we all know the abilities or, limitations of a piece of equipment depends alot on the operator.

winchman

 

[gerard]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

I think trip springs are more important on truck mounted blades because of the speed at which a truck travels. 5000lb truck moving at 10-15 miles an hour is an awful lot of inertia if if blade hits an immovable object. Generally tractors tend to move a little slower and if you do hit something hopefully you just lose traction instead of bending something. That said I would PREFER to have trip springs but if I didn't I would just compensate by knowing where I'm plowing and not drive too fast. After this winter I'll be keeping my eye out for a nice 7 foot blade to adapt to my loader!!!!!!

 

[Egon]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

Trev:

I've always considered pushing the bucket into the ground to fill it consisted of serious pushing.

Egon

 

[Trev]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I've always considered pushing the bucket into the ground to fill it consisted of serious pushing. )</font>

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm not sure my JD dealer was right, which is partly why I was asking. I can, maybe, talk the CFO into a FEL this year, but I want to make sure I won't regret losing the front blade. Sure works good for snow.

I could use a FEL to clear the mounds of snow I've pushed up, but what I've found is that if I drive into them and lift the front blade as I do, I can drive right over the top of them and push them down as I do. So far, so good. But I know a FEL would be handy for so many things. I have to play this carefully, or wifey will lower the boom on me. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

Bob

 

[hazmat]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

Would you have to give up the front plow to get the FEL? I think they are compatable (as far as the tractor is concerned) -- maybe the CFO has a different opinion. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[ELMO67]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

I, too, had my first experience moving deeper snow (20''), not really deep, but the deepest we have had in a while, the first since I've had the L3010. My experience has been, as also noted in a much earlier post, that plowing snow, using my LP RBT1584 rear blade is a fast effective way of moving snow- up to the 1 foot range. The last storm, with 20 '', my tractor only wanted to flounder around in the snow, the angle of the rear blade would pull the tractor sideways, and just generally make it bog down and spin. I have Blue- light spl. fluid loaded rear tires, Duo-grip chains and of course the rear blade- even that really didn't help- on a very slight grade, the tractor still would barely make headway. I did find that turning the rear blade around and pushing backwards would allow me to push any amount of snow anywhere. Since I have a 1200 ft. drive, my neck voted for different method! For the majority of the drive, it was just push as far as I could with the ft. bucket, the tractor also seems to excel at this, dump the full bucket, back up and attack it again. This way definately works, but is slow, it ended up taking 5 hours to do the job. After I was done using the bucket, I made a couple of passes with the rear blade and scraped everything back down to bare gravel. So- to make a long story short- what did I really learn? First, the loaded tires and cahins were an absolute necessity. Second, as long as the ground in ft. of the tires is clear, whether they are the ft. or rear tires, that tractor can move mountains of snow. Third, although for most occasions the rear blade works just fine, it just beats the h*ll out of the tractor and operator since it doesn't have a spring trip- I think that option is vitally important for a long trouble free tractor life. My conclusions to this are that for saving one's neck a lifetime of pain from being twisted around like an owls, the best method for removing snow- unless there is a LOT of it , is with a ft., frame mounted blade. To that end, I have already started designing a ft. blade attachment similar to the factory Kubota setup that will allow me to simply remove the quick disconnect ft. bucket, pop on the ft. blade, and GO PLOW SNOW! (At a much cheaper price than the recently quoted $4000 !! )

 

[Trev]

Re: Snow: The rest of the story

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Would you have to give up the front plow to get the FEL? I think they are compatable (as far as the tractor is concerned) -- maybe the CFO has a different opinion. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif )</font>

No, I wouldn't have to give up the front plow.. but I think it would be a bear of a job switching between the two as there are frame mounted parts.. it wouldn't be easy-on, easy-off. The blade can be removed easily (relatively speaking.. no where near as easy as removing a FEL), but I would guess it would be a major job to get the frame-mounted hardware off to make way for the FEL. So the option would probably boil down to trading the blade for a FEL.. one dealer said he'd give me $1500 for the blade in trade. But then I would have to rig up a front blade on the FEL, and would lose my hyrdraulic angling.. which I love.

We need to hit the lottery!! (The best definition I ever heard of the lottery is that it's a tax on people who are bad at math! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif)

Bob