Bending a snow blower?

[BWSwede]

I've got an 84" Farm King snow blower. I have it mounted on the front of a 10,000 pound 100 hp 4wd tractor with chains on all 4 wheels. I am wondering if it is possible to damage the snow blower by making say a 1 or 2 foot cut into a icy snow bank along the side of the road in an attempt to widen it.

The tractor will push incredibly hard and it seems to me that if I am not careful I could bend the side of the blower back toward the tractor when cutting back the bank. Although it seems this could happen I have never heard of it happening to anyone.

What are your guys' thoughts on this? Any body have any experience with this?

TIA,
BWSwede

 

[oosik]

I'm sure if you push hard enough - there will be damage somewhere. In the situation you describe - I would put the tractor in as low a gearing as possible and let the blower "eat" its way thru the snow bank. Otherwise - figure some procedure that breaks the snow bank first then come thru with the blower and clean up the chunky,broken snow.

I've only ever had a 3-point pto driven blower and when the berms along my driveway got hard & crusty I'd gear down as low as possible and chew thru it.

Your situation sounds like its a problem of breaking up the berm/bank first and not blowing the resulting broken up snow.

 

[RoyJackson]

I move the frozen stuff (such as Bane describes) with my 3PH blower. The main thing is to go slow and let the blower work it's way through. The augers will nibble through quick enough.
As far as damage...other then breaking a shear pin, I'd doubt it would be anything worse.

 

[lungdoc]

I think timing is your friend here - if you can get at the banks before a major thaw and refreeze turns them solid will be vastly faster and easier. I think there will be a certain level of frozen solid that will either damage equipment or break shear pins and/or be so slow as to be impractical. With that size machine a rear blade with offset would likely be a better tool for really frozen banks. Even a FEL could be easier though tedious as well.

 

[RedNeckRacin]

I'm voting for the break it up a bit with a bucket then clean up with the blower.

 

[JCByrd24]

I think unless it is really frozen you won't have much issue if you are careful. What I could see being the issue is getting one of the side plates into a hard bank and steering with a lot of traction, a lot of side loads on the rather unsupported side plates of the blower.

 

[RoyJackson]

I'm voting for the break it up a bit with a bucket then clean up with the blower.

I've found that unless you have a tooth bar mounted on the bucket, the FEL doesn't do well breaking up frozen piles of snow.

 

[BWSwede]

Thanks for the replies guys.

A couple things to note. I do not have a front bucket or backhoe to break up the ice chunks. I also have found that since the auger housing is about 30" tall and the auger is about 1/2 that there is about 15" above the auger that allows the ice to ram up against the back of the housing. It seems that no matter how slow I go, which can be really slow, I can still feel the blower trying to stop forward motion of the tractor.

Ideally, it would be nice to have a second auger above the current auger. That would prevent the latter condition above. Has anybody ever added a second auger to their blower?

Thanks again,
BWSwede

 

[RedNeckRacin]

I've found that unless you have a tooth bar mounted on the bucket, the FEL doesn't do well breaking up frozen piles of snow.

Good point roy, I guess I forgot that I have a bigger than average tractor on here. If I can get a corner of the bucket into it, I can usually get most things dug up.

 

[RoyJackson]

...If I can get a corner of the bucket into it, I can usually get most things dug up.

I'd be mighty leery about doing that with any sized tractor with a QA loader...
But, if it works for you. more power to ya!