JDLA115 44 inch snow caster

[leonz]

For those of you that have the 44 inch snow caster for your mules.

I have to deal with heavy wet snows and plow banks at times and hopefully the last
set of repair parts will be it for a quite while.

After installing the the new guide pulley and the belt retainer I ran the snow caster
without snow for a while and noticed the driven V belt would move quite a bit while
under no load. I could not see the return side of the belt and whether it moved from
side to side at that point.

The cross brace frame that holds the supplied guide pulley and belt retainer has an opposing mounting position that
has a punched square hole for a guide pulley as well. I am wondering out loud that perhaps a second guide pulley should be
installed due to the V belt bouncing with no load other than the two vertical pulleys and the driven main pulley?
The right vertical pulley has a V belt guide and the tab sits in gap below it to hold it in place to keep it from moving and wearing out the belt prematurely

I realize the opposing punched hole is for another mule in the series but I believe this remedy this would help with a longer belt life and prevent premature V belt wear and failure as the V belt travels along this path to the drive pulley at the rear of the snow blower frame.


Have any of you installed the four blade metal impeller on your 44 inch snow casters or is this even possible?

The JD driven belts for the LA115 are $84 and change plus shipping from the green part store.
I bought 2 A118 Gates Series One V Belts through Amazon and I spent half that amount with
freight to my door via the United States Postal Service.

FYI the worm gear gearboxes for the 44 inch snow casters cross augers are almost $600.00 from
the green parts store folks UGH.

Makes me more determined to cut teeth in the cross augers to break the snow up
even more finely and line the housing with slick sheet material.
The replacement left and right cross augers are $200.17 from the green parts store folks.

I am still debating changing the cross auger and driven pulley bearings to greased
bearings and wonder if its worth the effort as they are sealed bearings anyway and the
2017-18 winter will be the sixth winter that I will have used it.


Hopefully this weeks snow will let me run it with the new belts and pulley for a longer period
of time.

 

[Richard001]

Belt stretch and rebound will happen with V-belts, especially under load. However unless you have experienced the belt coming off the pulleys, or wearing out the back side of the belt, then I would say that the belt bounce is not a problem.

How long is the unguided part of the belt?

Richard

 

[leonz]

Hello Richard001,


I did not measure it but a guess would be close to 3 feet. I have dealt with a lot of V belts in my time but only seen the strap belts for flat pulleys this long or longer without a snubber. There is a snubber pulley under tension on the opposing side.

The belt begins to turn clockwise to meet the driven pulley about half way so in saying that the belt should be left alone to allow it to rotate from the vertical to the horizontal to meet the groove of the driven pulley.

I I get ambitious I may just take my 3 horsepower sprayer motor and mount that up front with set of sprockets replacing the belt drive some time and see how well that does with bales of soaked wood sawdust shavings which is the exact test that consumer reports uses to test the walk behinds. The sprockets would have to be the same size to take advantage of the motors automatic governor function anyway.

A little math, two two row 80H sprockets, and 80H chain and we shall see what happens as I know what the speed of the maximum impeller speed is already





Time will tell I guess.