Convert/Redo hydraulic snow pump

[bigdeano]

How about a 4x4 truck with a diesel engine in the bed and a chain drive to a shaft under the truck body to the front blower. You'd have to weld up a chain housing with pillow blocks and run the chain in oil. More efficient than hydraulic drive and a lot cheaper. Put as much horsepower in it as you want. Would be fun to build. Hardly snows here though.

 

[oldnslo]

fitterski,
I also have no clue on the weight of silage or haylage Vs snow. Just trying to give you some idea on fan size & speed for an application throwing something into the air. for reference I could unload approximately 2 ton/minute silage with 90 HP.

110% agree mechanical will provide the best performance and least cost.

Bigdeano has an interesting concept if you can get enough lift height.

 

[fitterski]

How about a 4x4 truck with a diesel engine in the bed and a chain drive to a shaft under the truck body to the front blower. You'd have to weld up a chain housing with pillow blocks and run the chain in oil. More efficient than hydraulic drive and a lot cheaper. Put as much horsepower in it as you want. Would be fun to build. Hardly snows here though.

Ever since having gone to Gates cogged belts I have totally left chain drives behind. For one thing they have a beauty of a gearing simulator on their web site that SHOULD be he envy of every machinery or hydraulics manufacturer. When I was first designing the existing horror it came out with a 1-1/2 inch suggestion for the HP, which sounded well, how could I express it, like pink panty hose, you know? So I phoned one of their gurus and got the answer more or less: "look we garantee it'll do the job, of course if you want to just forget it for the rest of your life take a 4" job good for 600 hp and you will never again have to bother with it. THAT's exact;y what I did I have NEVER again bothered with it ))))

Because the larger fans, 48" needs a driveshaft at least 24" above the ground, that poses problems of its own. But I also have a retired Jimmy 4x4.... so the stage-4 build might just go in such a direction.

 

[fitterski]

fitterski,
I also have no clue on the weight of silage or haylage Vs snow. Just trying to give you some idea...

I realize that & thanks for the idea, I sometimes come across like a stuck-up turkey, sorry

2 tons a minute that's not bad at all! I've always eyeballed snow as so much per second and have thought along lines of maybe 50lbs/sec or 3000lbs/min so it's ballpark. But I never really calculated it (yet). That ballpark compare also jives with the relative horsepowers so at least it must be pretty proportional. Don't know what Bigdeano is, google hits on nothing.

 

[oldnslo]

I realize that & thanks for the idea, I sometimes come across like a stuck-up turkey, sorry

You have nothing to apologize about. To easy to get misinterpreted on these forums or life in general anymore.

2 tons a minute that's not bad at all! I've always eyeballed snow as so much per second and have thought along lines of maybe 50lbs/sec or 3000lbs/min so it's ballpark. But I never really calculated it (yet). That ballpark compare also jives with the relative horsepowers so at least it must be pretty proportional. Don't know what Bigdeano is, google hits on nothing.

bigdeano was the person that posted about putting an engine in the back of a 4 x 4 and front driving the blower via chain drive.


For the record I was figuring you would put the dura-max engine in the bed of your Tundra to drive the hydraulic pump. I have never seen the video of what you have today. Shows as an invalid link on my screen.

Another off the wall idea from a darn Yankee Do you have larger farm tractors in your area with front PTO option like they have in Europe? If yes possibly front mount a blower on one of them.

 

[fitterski]

oldnslo, i was not allowed to post links when i had just joined so i worked around that by posting only the y-tube #. The full link should work

Deutz powered JD Snow Blower from Hell 29 - YouTube

I built this for xmas 2009, it's doing it's 8th season and it looks like a big one already. We have 10-15 storms generally, we're already on #6 as i write this

My Tundra idea might be wavering, it's a big truck that is less maneuverable. Plus it's an automatic and although i just bought it last summer and am not that familiar with it i already don't like Toyota's way of doing things. For example I may have reason to wanna instantly floor it and spin all studded wheels at any time. IT will not let me do so, etc. etc. So a new flash-in-the-pan is taking form: i have a retired Jimmy 4x4, and even better I'm already casing a real jeep (cursing the day i gave my 4x4 cherokee away). The plan might be to swap a front axle in the back for 4-wheel drive AND 4-wheel steering, put engine and pump on rear frame extension, blower in the front. Geometry permitting maybe do without hydraulics.

All begins however with the engine on the current platform, that's where i might have it ready to prove itself next season. After that....

 

[fitterski]

I've been tinkering with fan tip speeds and such, here' s the results

I don't understand how variable pressure pumps work i.e. just how that pans out in practice. The last 'notes' entry on the attached image is what I would consider a pro solution but have no idea how I would accomplish it. Another possibility (if using a Duramax) would be to also use the 6-speeed Allison connected directly to the fan, giving a very wide range of control.

 

[oldnslo]

I've been tinkering with fan tip speeds and such, here' s the results

I don't understand how variable pressure pumps work i.e. just how that pans out in practice.View attachment 494358

Variable pressure or variable volume? Variable volume pumps can be controlled via pressure. These pumps would have a control that senses pressure and at some preset point the control would start to reduce displacement to maintain a constant pressure.

If using a closed circuit pump like a hydrostatic transmission you can proportional displacement with pressure override. This allows you to set a displacement and then at a preset pressure the pump will start to reduce displacement.

On both of these example the displacement will increase if the pressure falls below the set point of the control.

Do these definitions help at all?

 

[fitterski]

What caught my eye was variable displacement in a catalogue. Thanks for the answer but for now it's over my head, kind of a paradigm shift to start thinking in terms other than gear ratio & torque*rpm/52xx

I am now committed to the Duramax diesel, just struck a deal on one. It ain't delivered yet but I should have in 10 days or so. This engine will give me all the power I could ask for and then some with 700 ftlbs of torque on tap @ 2200 rpm I would still be in the comfort zone with 250 hp easy for a pump at only 600 rpm above optimal torque.

What I had in mind initially was to use 3* more volume @ 1/3 the rpm at the motor end as a dummy's way to torque convert. I will have to revisit this topic later maybe, I think I posted prematurely. Depending on fan size I may not wanna go above 700 fan rpm so the 3 to 1 ratio might still apply at a bit less power.

Concurrently if there is a way to run the fan at 700 rpm with a much lower engine (pump) speed when there is little snow then it would be more elegant to do so and spare the engine. I 'think' (in hydraulics I'm not qualified to think) that some variable displacement pump/motor and governor combination might hit just what I want.

A closed circuit it will be, I have not seen any hydraulic snow blower with a reservoir yet.

 

[CJONE]

You still need a res with a closed loop system, about 1/4 of what you need with open but with the correct coolers you don't need much. For a example the system I usually build for a top drive is 120 Gpm at 5000psi and they happily live with a 25 gallon res and the correctly sized cooler running 24/7. Remember the oil into and out of the res is controlled by the size of the charge pump. I run a 2.4 cu.in. pump and that gives me just under 25gpm. For almost any high horsepower application piston units are the way to go. We average 4-5 years out of a 25 series Sundstrand pump and 2 years out of the drive motors. only because of the high surging with drilling. CJ