Snow Plow, Front or 3pt Hitch

[jk96]

Nice tractor Ford

I'll have a similar setup just a little smaller with the 45. What brand of snow plow do you have? Also, how do the skid shoes work for you on gravel? I ordered the shoes with mine and will be plowing 50% paved and 50% gravel.

jk

 

[Ford850]

Nice tractor Ford

I'll have a similar setup just a little smaller with the 45. What brand of snow plow do you have? Also, how do the skid shoes work for you on gravel? I ordered the shoes with mine and will be plowing 50% paved and 50% gravel.

jk

The plow is a Hiniker Big Ox. I run 2 hoses from my rear remote valves to the blade for angle control.
The shoes sink into the gravel too much to use much early in the season. Once the snow is packed or the gravel is frozen solid they work fine and keep me from rolling the gravel off the drive. My drive is 1100' long, mostly gravel, and full of dips, curves and half on a hill. So some gravel ends up off the drive but I use a strong leaf blower in the spring to move it back onto the drive before the grass gets growing.

 

[alltoys]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I have 20 inch and 30 inch diameter pipe coming so I can make a blade up for my tractor. So far I am liking the idea of a blade on the rear as a 3pt and keeping the FEL for moving snow as it piles up. At least this it is a quick change if I need the 3pt for something else.

Probably from reading all the posts a frame mounted blower might be the best unit to have. Are these mostly single stage or 2 stage blowers?

 

[Todd NE WY]

Guys,

Has anyone ever put guide wheels on one of the blades mounted out on the loader arms. I have the JD blade on my 4320 with 400x loader. It works great but the float isn't effective because we have a gravel driveway and the weight of the blade just pulls the feet and the blade into the gravel. This latest discussion has me wondering if guide wheels have ever been tried and if they would help with this.

Todd

 

[Ford850]

The shoes on my FEL plow dig in when the drive is soft too. I think someone on here added guide wheels, but I don't think they would be much better than shoes for me. Some others have added a slit pipe over the edge of the blade. I also saw some examples of pipe or solid bar mounted behind the blade edge. I'm looking into a variation of that, by welding 2 vertical 1" rods 10" long to the top edge of a 2 1/2" or 3" pipe. The rods would be spaced so they will insert into the existing shoe mount brackets on the back of the plow. That would give me a 90" skid behind the blade. The pipe would skid over the gravel, with the weight ditributed along the full length. I could tilt the blade forward to lift the skid above the cutting edge, and tilt it back to use the skid. I could use the height adjustment spacers from my original shoes too. Since I don't weld, I'm getting a price on the skid from a shop now. The price might be too high for me to have it made, but others could use this idea if they have scap metal and can weld.
A better design yet would be a rolling pipe with end posts to mount in the skid shoe brackets. Think of a full length anti scalp roller like mowers have.

 

[smfcpacfp]

Probably from reading all the posts a frame mounted blower might be the best unit to have. Are these mostly single stage or 2 stage blowers?

The blower that comes with my tractor pictured on page 1 is two staged. It can throw the snow a long way into the woods for me (I would say up to 100' with light snow). This way you don't ever have to worry about pushing the snow banks back as some of the plow people mentioned, since there is no bank.

 

[alltoys]

The blower that comes with my tractor pictured on page 1 is two staged. It can throw the snow a long way into the woods for me (I would say up to 100' with light snow). This way you don't ever have to worry about pushing the snow banks back as some of the plow people mentioned, since there is no bank.

Is your blower run by a hydraulic motor from one of the controls on the FEL?

 

[smfcpacfp]

Is your blower run by a hydraulic motor from one of the controls on the FEL?

The augers, impeller shat run off of the mid PTO. The chute rotator and snowblower lift run off of the front hydraulics.

 

[metalmeltr]

I would just use the FEL no need for a blade.

 

[rbutterfield]

For what it's worth (probably not much), I decided against buying JD's snow blade for my 2320 because I didn't care for having to remove the FEL to install the blade and decided against a 3 point because I didn't want to drive backwards all the time, so I built my own.
I drop the bucket, connect two hoses to the SCV and pick up the plow. Works great, better than expected. I just installed another valve for controlling the angle of the blade and use the SCV for L&R angle and for raising/lowering.
I know there are legitimate concerns about having a blade attached to the FEL arms on a compact but for me, it works.