Advice Needed Before I Destroy My Driveway

[JimMorrissey]

Pete,

Hey, just a side note here......I saw what I believe was your wife this morning in Richmond! I was turning left to go to the interstate and she drove past me. The only reason I knew it was her was your gatewaytovermont.com sign was on the Subaru. You have a beautiful dog there too.

 

[Boondox]

Jim -- Yup, that was her! Small world! The dog was a rescue being taken to safety via the Canine Underground Railroad: CURR. In abuse cases, we get them as far away as possible as quickly as possible. That fellow was headed for Pennsylvania via a half dozen volunteer drivers.

So if you live that close, why not bring your sled up for a try at my bobsled run..?

Pete

 

[benewton]

I've the same problems you have, including my first, and probably only, tractor.

I've only about 175' of driveway, which is called gravel in New Hampshire, but dirt elsewhere, but also get to plow to the woodpile, clear pads for turn arounds, etc. I'll also get to try to level the whole mess in the spring, a problem I'll deal with when I get there!

I'm using a TC-40D with a Land Pride 3584 rear blade, T+T, and the 16LA FEL.

We've had only a single 8" snowstorm so far, with the remainder being 2-3" or so, none of the above being important given that we run 4WD in our Blazer and F150. Still, you 'gotta do the job...

I've done best with the blade plowing backwards, blade in the "normal" reversed bulldozing position, with the ground frozen, of course. The FEL, float position be damned, is useful only for pile removal, so far as I can tell.

Good tractor, smart buyer, stupid operator....

So it goes!

 

[gordon]

It takes time to get the hang of it. I've got the exact same blade as you. I really good investment is a reargauge wheel or skidshoes so the blade doesn't dig in to much. I've attached a picture of my blade showing the rear gauge wheel. In the pic's the skidshoes are on their mounts but upside down of course.

I'm gunna have a blast with this new camera.
Gordon

 

[Spencer]

Well we finally got some more snow so I got to try some of the advice out. The ground here in Western Michigan is not even close to being frozen so it was a true test.

I first tried shortening up the toplink to make the blade less aggressive. That didn't seem to help a whole lot because the toplink was already set pretty short.

Then I tried rotating the blade around so that the convex side was to the front. This helped a lot but was still not the best method due to my driveway configuration. I have to pull the snow away from my garage and then push it into my turnaround which is 90 degrees from my main drive. When I would try to pull the snow with the blade convex, my tractor would run over the piles of snow that I pulled away from the garage and everytime the tractor tilted a little to one side or the other the rear blade would dig into the ground.

Then I rotated the blade again to its original position with the concave side toward the tractor. I swiveled my seat to one side and pushed all the snow while driving backwards. This way the convex side of the blade was still pushing the snow and the tractor would never tilt because the ground was cleaned up by the blade before the tractor traveled over it.

I knew that the swivel seat would come in handy for something. The Kubota that I was considering (L3010) had armrests but no swivel seat. The NH TC33D that I ended up with had no armrests but the swivel seat. At least I can add the armrests later if I want to.

Thanks Again,
Spence

 

[HR_Mutt]

Spencer
That heavy wet snow on top of the fact it had been in the 50's for days before it arrived, it's hard NOT to cause damage. The only spots where I did not scrub up some gravel are where I used fel in float with leading edge tilted up, leaving some snow which may turn to ice. We'll get some more warm days and you can put it all back in place again./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
regards
Mutt