B2782 Snow Blower modifying

[bumperm]

Bumper, I'm copying your lining of your snowblower. I purchased only 48" long material so I may have to have a seam in the 20" impeller housing. How is the liner attached inside the "tube".. --not the exit spout. Mine seems to have lots of room between impeller and barrel- like 1/2". I know you have a slot hole for expansion but not sure where that is.
Thanks, rob

Rob,

Not sure I understand your question completely, so forgive my "stumbling through it" answer.

For the impeller housing (not the chute), I could not figure out a good and easy way to joint two lengths to have a seamless liner. I thought about trying to weld the UHMW - and that might work. Also considered beveling and overlapping the edges of the two required pieces - but abandoned that idea too, and simply bought a whole sheet of 1/8" UHMW, cost a little over $100 IIRC and the company wanted an exorbitant amount for shipping - I told them to roll it up and they said okay, so shipping was about $25.

The impeller housing liner is mounted with two 10-32 screws and nuts at the "paddle entry" end, with the liner bent at an acute angle to mate with that lip and then the screws are above that bend out of harms way. It is the bend in the liner that is fixing the beginning of the liner in place so the impeller cannot pull it further around. The trailing edge of the liner (facing the front of the blower, this would be on the left side as the exit of the housing going up into the chute) the liner is fixed with a single 10-32 screw washers and locknut through a vertical slot in the liner to allow for thermal expansion and contraction.

Hope that answers your questions.

bumper

 

[srs]

SRS,

Sorry I missed your post & questions:

bumper, no problem. Thank you very much for the explanation on how you attached the UHMW to your blower. I kinda figured you had to countersink the bolts to prevent them from digging into any hard surface. Outstanding job! Thank you again. Stanley

 

[bumperm]

Latest mod lining back of box with curve to lift snow.

When blowing wet slushy snow, or snow over ice, often the snow get's pushed ahead of the blower and doesn't want to feed properly. Back up, bonk into the "snow bank" then it feeds. Hopefully this mod will address this. Will find out tomorrow. Couldn't hurt, as often snow is packed in at the bottom of the auger housing.

Edit to add: Okay, just tried it out - - works as expected, no snow packed along the bottom after shut down and no snow stuck to the UHMW (which is most unlikely anyway). It did, however, still push a little snow. With only a little snow 2" over slushy, I was moving faster than one would normally. "Push" is much less than normal. Expect at least a foot tonight, so will do a better test tomorrow.

 

[dnw64]

Latest mod lining back of box with curve to lift snow.

When blowing wet slushy snow, or snow over ice, often the snow get's pushed ahead of the blower and doesn't want to feed properly. Back up, bonk into the "snow bank" then it feeds. Hopefully this mod will address this. Will find out tomorrow. Couldn't hurt, as often snow is packed in at the bottom of the auger housing.

Edit to add: Okay, just tried it out - - works as expected, no snow packed along the bottom after shut down and no snow stuck to the UHMW (which is most unlikely anyway). It did, however, still push a little snow. With only a little snow 2" over slushy, I was moving faster than one would normally. "Push" is much less than normal. Expect at least a foot tonight, so will do a better test tomorrow.

Considering this is a "thermo" plastic, seems like the mfr could just dip the whole thing in a molten tub of the stuff and coat every surface!

On a more realistic note - great job on finding the friction bottlenecks and coming up with creative ways to reduce/eliminate them.

 

[bumperm]

Considering this is a "thermo" plastic, seems like the mfr could just dip the whole thing in a molten tub of the stuff and coat every surface!

On a more realistic note - great job on finding the friction bottlenecks and coming up with creative ways to reduce/eliminate them.

Thanks!

Next project: The tractor lives in a garage that kept around 40F in the winter, so the blower is above freezing. I'll sometimes spray Pam on the feed auger, but a better option would be to line the feed helix with UHMW too, just the drive face of the auger, as I've had the auger get completely loaded up with so much ice and packed snow that it loses much of its feed capability. Tentative plan is to make curved segments and mount each with a screw at each end, maybe a small slot at the "trailing" end of each segment to allow thermal expansion/contraction. Will probably take me until next fall to get around to it. Had back surgery a month ago that's going well, but all up it's taken me out of action for the better part of a year.

 

[PILOON]

Nice work at the lining job. That took patience.

Having been around blowers for a while and with friends in the snow removal business I come up with a few observations.
Most chutes are somewhat tapered, this is to increase the velocity which increases the distance and as a result creates a 'choke' that has the undesirable result of compacting wet snow and thus clogging the chute.
So the chute is one of the big problems.

The wider the fan chamber the higher the velocity and farther the goes the snow.

More fan blades the faster the exit or more volume.

The closer the fan gaps the better the volume and velocity.

In summery, I suggest fan gap sealing is effective as is poly addition to the chute.
The balance I believe are relatively less or non productive.

I had some wide heavy duty (8") tape that I lined my chute with early this fall and I have not had a single clog so far this winter.
You will note that many walk behind blowers now sport all plastic chutes.
Haven't yet closed my fan gaps but that is a project for this spring as is a preemptive change of all bearings as they are cheap.

 

[FatTire]

PILOON, what kind of tape?

 

[JWR]

In my first post I addressed the issue. The 64" length of UHMW I used was first placed in a freezer to cool, then measured and marked before putting in my hot tub. Then measured again and found to have "grown" by just under 1/2".

One end of the housing liner strip (blade "entry" end) is fixed in place with two machine screws. The exit end (where the snow heads to the chute) is NOT fixed in place in the lateral direction. There is a + 1/2" slot for the machine screw and fender washer to provide a sliding fit at this point to allow for the differential coefficient of expansion between liner and metal housing.

In use, the centrifugal forces imposed on snow will push against the liner to closely "mold" it to the steel housing. This will automatically adjust the slip fit end of the liner as needed to compensate for temperature variations. This sort, or similar, accommodation for expansion is an absolute requirement for my design to work, no question.

Forums are for helpful information AND opinions. First you have done a great job and I am impressed with the neat work. Second, I have to say that in my opinion you are overdoing it. The chute was worth doing. The rest of it (especially lining the big rotor duct and having to cut off the rotor tips for space) was a mistake. That will never, in my view do you any good at all and worse yet is likely to create problems in the long run. The expansion and contraction issue alone should have been a flag to do the chute and let the rest go. A great idea carried beyond what makes sense in my frank opinion. Time and experience will tell. Interesting regardless.

 

[bumperm]

The tape you will want to use is UHMW-PE (ultra high molecular weight polyethylene). This is the very same material I used to line my blower. It is the strongest long chain polymer known to man and almost as slippery as Teflon. Further, in many applications, such as aggregate chutes etc, it wears better than steel. 1" will stop a 45 at close range - amazing stuff, really.

The tape is available from Amazon and McMaster-Carr on-line. It is available in thicknesses from about 5 mills (.005") to 20 mills, one company is selling 1/32" thick adhesive backed strips on Amazon. But, be advised that the thicker tape will not do tight curves well (shouldn't be a problem on a blower) and non of it will do compound curves (i.e. if there's a small depression of bump or a curve going in more'n one direction, the tape is so strong that it won't stretch).

Now, not being a big dummy when it comes to avoiding extra work, I first tried lining my blower chute with UHMW-PE first (before using 1/8" thick material). This worked fine until I his some sharp edged gravel and that impact tore the tape. I was probably using 5 to 7 mill tape (I have a selection of width's and thicknesses as it's really handy stuff to have in the shop). So, the caution is, don't run over a bunch of gravel and the tape should work fine (and it's easy enough to replace anyway, (use a heat gun to warm first).

I may use tape to line the face of my auger and see how that works.

As to sealing blower fan blades - yes, that'll for sure increase throw. I did that when I lined by blower housing with 1/8" thick UHMW, as the gap was less than 1/8" so I trimmed the blades to fit - they are actually in contact with the plastic through the last part of their arc of travel (fan is not perfectly concentric with blower housing, unfortunately).

There are guys out there selling diaphragm or conveyor belt material as a "kit" to seal the ends of the blades. That'll work. I was going to make blade covers of the 1/8" thick UHMW, slot the mounting holes so the blades could move in and out enough to account of the eccentricity of my housing. My do that at some point - - it's just that it works so well now, I really don't need to mess with it. Last storm there was about an inch or two of melted slush ice under about 6" of heavy to moderate snow. The blower was throwing this stuff in a steady stream like a fire hose - not fanning out much at all. This was the sort of stuff that would have clogged up most blowers, I think.

This is 10 mill thick tape in various widths: TapeCase 423-1 UHMW Tape (Multiple Sizes): Amazon.com: Industrial & Scientific

If using tape, I'd suggest acrylic adhesive over rubber adhesive ( both are available).

 

[bumperm]

Forums are for helpful information AND opinions. First you have done a great job and I am impressed with the neat work. Second, I have to say that in my opinion you are overdoing it. The chute was worth doing. The rest of it (especially lining the big rotor duct and having to cut off the rotor tips for space) was a mistake. That will never, in my view do you any good at all and worse yet is likely to create problems in the long run. The expansion and contraction issue alone should have been a flag to do the chute and let the rest go. A great idea carried beyond what makes sense in my frank opinion. Time and experience will tell. Interesting regardless.

You are both right and completely wrong!!

The chute liner is probably the most important thing in terms of increasing throw distance and eliminating chute clogs. Before lining my fan housing, I was experiencing abrasion and wear from gravel and sand etc, especially when clearing snow plow berms. Striations around the circumference of the housing were indicative of the wear and abrasion as well. I painted the housing (one LAST time) and lined it. This accomplishes several things. Eliminated all wear to structure and adds an easily replaceable wear surface that has more abrasion resistance than steel, reduced friction losses between fan and housing, and closed up the gaps between fan blade tips and housing for more efficiency. In my case, the fan blades were not all of exactly the same length (now they are). If the fan was a little easier to remove, I would have dynamically balanced it too :c).

Yup, I'm one of those poor souls afflicted with the "how can I make this better" thing, when it comes to stuff mechanical. Drives some people nuts. But, not meaning to brag, that "character flaw" has served me well. In just one instance, netting over a million in patent royalties for a tool idea that took all of 45 minutes to design. Obsessive? Yes, sometimes, but in the case of the blower, well worth it, and should have been built that way from the beginning. Unfortunately, as we all know, most stuff is not manufactured with the primary goal of how can we make this better for our customers.