ironnut
Member
This ancient crawler has been the mainstay of our snow removal system for 20 years. I finally got tired of crawling off to change the angle of the blade. Our quarter mile lane requires casting the snow to the left for half of its length and to the right for the other half. Climbing on and off of this rig when snow and ice were present was an accident in waiting. Getting into my sixth decade of life meant banged up shins and knees don't heal very quickly
Creepy (as my wife named it) is a mid 1950s Oliver Cletrac OC-3. As can be seen from this photo the dozer blade is manually angled by means of pins and a short U-shaped channel extension. I decided that a hydraulically controlled method was in order. I cogitated about this for at least 4 years and in the fall of 2011 I finally got started.
At one point I had done a 3D model in Solid Works based on a toggle mechanism. There were some aspects of that design that didn't feel like a good approach and left me wondering how one could actually implement it. I discarded that approach and returned to the large pivot design common on 6 way dozer blade designs on most bull dozers. I decided that some 3 inch and 3 and half inch heavy wall pipe would be sufficient for the pivot along with some half inch thick plate for the mounts.
Next I fabricated some clamp components and then fired up the welder.
Then I got to dry fit it to the crawler. It was at the point that I ran a-foul of the geometric short comings of my toggle design for angling the blade and was forced to re-think my approach. I spent some time with google and found examples of 6 way blades.
I decided on that method to angle the blade. It turns out the two cylinders I had purchased from the Surplus center were probably surplus from some after market 6 way dozer blade manufacturer.
After numerous false starts and much cogitation I finally got the details worked out.
Then some serious re-plumbing of the hydraulics and I was finally getting some where.
Murphy's law was in play most of this winter as we did not get any significant snow until the middle of January when mother nature made up for loss time. We got a good 12 inches of pretty wet snow with some drifting. Our driveway was not passable using 4 wheel drive so I spent the evening pushing snow. I gave the whole design a real world work out. The system performed well and the only issue was 4 of the 1/2 inch bolts worked loose, e.g. the attachment points of the pivot to the dozer blade itself. On the off chance that I just had not tightened them, I re-torqued them and pushed some more snow. They were loose again, so I opted to weld the pivot bracket to the blade along with the 4 bolts. I see no reason to ever go back to the manual design so I figured it was a pretty safe mod.
I suppose someday when I don't have anything to do,
I can clean things up and paint it, yeah right. Fortunately here in the desert things rust very slowly.
gordon
Creepy (as my wife named it) is a mid 1950s Oliver Cletrac OC-3. As can be seen from this photo the dozer blade is manually angled by means of pins and a short U-shaped channel extension. I decided that a hydraulically controlled method was in order. I cogitated about this for at least 4 years and in the fall of 2011 I finally got started.
At one point I had done a 3D model in Solid Works based on a toggle mechanism. There were some aspects of that design that didn't feel like a good approach and left me wondering how one could actually implement it. I discarded that approach and returned to the large pivot design common on 6 way dozer blade designs on most bull dozers. I decided that some 3 inch and 3 and half inch heavy wall pipe would be sufficient for the pivot along with some half inch thick plate for the mounts.
Next I fabricated some clamp components and then fired up the welder.
Then I got to dry fit it to the crawler. It was at the point that I ran a-foul of the geometric short comings of my toggle design for angling the blade and was forced to re-think my approach. I spent some time with google and found examples of 6 way blades.
I decided on that method to angle the blade. It turns out the two cylinders I had purchased from the Surplus center were probably surplus from some after market 6 way dozer blade manufacturer.
After numerous false starts and much cogitation I finally got the details worked out.
Then some serious re-plumbing of the hydraulics and I was finally getting some where.
Murphy's law was in play most of this winter as we did not get any significant snow until the middle of January when mother nature made up for loss time. We got a good 12 inches of pretty wet snow with some drifting. Our driveway was not passable using 4 wheel drive so I spent the evening pushing snow. I gave the whole design a real world work out. The system performed well and the only issue was 4 of the 1/2 inch bolts worked loose, e.g. the attachment points of the pivot to the dozer blade itself. On the off chance that I just had not tightened them, I re-torqued them and pushed some more snow. They were loose again, so I opted to weld the pivot bracket to the blade along with the 4 bolts. I see no reason to ever go back to the manual design so I figured it was a pretty safe mod.
I suppose someday when I don't have anything to do,
I can clean things up and paint it, yeah right. Fortunately here in the desert things rust very slowly. gordon