How Far Does Your Blower... Blow?!

[fishpick]

hazmat / ccsial -
The shear bolt on the 2nd stage of your Ford thrower - the one that's prone to break A LOT... what are you guys running in there? I don't want to go too strong - but I get sick of replacing it all the time... that said I know I'm use a bolt grade right now that's likely not even "graded" - it's some really light thing that came in a jar from a garage sale - with 100's of other thing - all for 0.10 - so I know I'm getting what I pay for right now...

 

[hazmat]

hazmat / ccsial -
The shear bolt on the 2nd stage of your Ford thrower - the one that's prone to break A LOT... what are you guys running in there? I don't want to go too strong - but I get sick of replacing it all the time... that said I know I'm use a bolt grade right now that's likely not even "graded" - it's some really light thing that came in a jar from a garage sale - with 100's of other thing - all for 0.10 - so I know I'm getting what I pay for right now...

Not sure what the previous owner had in there, I never broke that one. Only broke one auger pin. My drive is paved & the only foreign object I ever ingested was a fiberglass driveway marker, which made a mess, but didn't pop any pins.

 

[ccsial]

hazmat / ccsial -
The shear bolt on the 2nd stage of your Ford thrower - the one that's prone to break A LOT... what are you guys running in there?

I've only broken the fan shear bolt once while doing the neighbor farmers gravel drive when he was pretty sick.

I use the one in the manual and got them from my Ford dealer.

For the auger they give only the P/N 654601. The manual says to use this special shear bolt only.

For the fan they spec. 1/4" by 1-1/2" grade 5 shear bolt (no part#)

 

[4630 GSTC]

Just used my new Puma Pronovost 84 on 14" of fresh powder. It threw the snow 25-30 ft. with the chute directed in the horizontal position. Two passes on my 900ft. driveway in about 30 min. Far superior to plowing! Glad that I went with the cab.

 

[ccsial]

I forgot te mention that the Ford blowers were made by BER in Canada. I think you have to put a BER in front of the part number or something like that. The 654601 bolt is special since it has a notch in it.

One nice thing about these older Ford blowers is no chain drives.

 

[rbargeron]

Some of the snow goes 40 feet - a lot of it doesn't.

This is a 7' rear-mount with a 3-blade 22" fan - running about 500 rpm (tach at 1700 with pto on the "720" speed)

This year I have an Erskine front-mount with 22" 4-blade fan. It seems to launch the snow similarly.

 

[hench861]

i use grade 2 from tractor supply the trick i found is get one with no thread in the shear area and just cut off the excess thread,i also use a heavy gauge plastic from a local plastics place on my rops for wind and just slit it for the chute handle