Snowblower Meteor snowblower with hydraulic chute rotator?

[canoetrpr]

I have a 68" Meteor with a hand crank. I am installing remotes on my tractor and was wondering what might be requried to change my blower over to have a hydraulic chute rotator.

If you have a Meteor with a hydraulic chute rotator, can you post a picture to give me a idea of how I might be able to do this. I imagine I can get a kit from the manufacturer but I'm guessing that will be more expensive than converting myself it it is possible to do easily.

 

[PILOON]

Instead of hydraulics consider an inexpensive ATV winch (usually about$40-60) and mount it vertically near the chute.

Unwind the cable from the winch drum and shorten it to minimum required length.
You'd want about twice the diameter of the snow shute plus the equivilant for the winch drum plus the amount of the distance between the chute and vertically mounted winch.
Re clamp the winch cable at midpoint to the winch drum and wind equal amounts in either direction.
Clamp the ends to the snow chute.

A setup like that will allow virtually 360 deg rotation of the chute for less than $100. all told.

Those winches are rated at 2000 lbs so that it should even break loose any ice as well.

I have done a similar installation using a wheelchair drive moter only I used chain and sprocket as $50 winches were not available at the time.

I am on my 3rd winter with my setup, trouble free!

Hydraulics are great but with motor or cylinder plus valve and fittings and hoses + brackets and welding the cost would easily exceede $500.

 

[ToadHill]

I'll take a picture for you early next week when I go to the farm. I looked through my pictures and the only one I have that shows the hydraulic rotator, the piston and mount are covered with snow.

 

[herringchoker]

My old blower is not a Meteor, but I converted the chute from hand crank to hydraulic rotation about 12 or 14 years ago. I did it on the cheap using an old cylinder that I had scrounged. The trickiest part was doing the geometry to convert the cylinder stroke to degrees of rotation of the chute. I had to modify the geometry when I got the B7800 because the chute could hit the cab when I raised the blower. It used to rotate about 210 degrees on my old tractor, now it's a little over 180 on the Kubota. The setup works remarkably well, especially considering the Rube Goldberg approach.

In the 1st. picture you can see the blue cylinder on the right that operates the orange lever arm in the centre. There are 2 pulleys on the lever arm (on top on the right and underneath on the left) that the cables loop around. (The coil of hydraulic hose tied to the blue cylinder is from my old tractor - the remote valve was up front on it...I'm still working on the cheap )

The 2nd. and 3rd. pics show how the cables are connected to the blower itself and to the chute (left side of chute in 2nd. pic) and looped around the pulleys on the lever arm.

If I were doing it again and starting from scratch, I would take a hard look at PILOON's idea with the electric winch.

Good luck with it.

 

[canoetrpr]

herringchoker - thanks. That gives me some ideas.

I'm doing a remote installation to get hydraulic top and tilt installed anyway so I decided to add two extra spools (about $120 for the extra spools) just in case I want to run something else off the remotes - without taking the TnT hoses off.

 

[herringchoker]

canoetrpr - good idea adding the extra spools...I wish I had done that.

Before I converted the chute to hydraulic, I toured the local equipment dealer lots and took lots of pictures of rotating mechanisms. Given the materials I had, this seemed to be the best way to go. I also made the cylinder easily removable from the blower so I can put it to other uses the rest of the year (although I haven't done that yet).

Another thing I've always done with remotes is to have a male and a female QD on each remote (instead of 2 females). That way, I can never connect the hoses backwards and I always connect the 2 hoses to each other when disconnected from the remote (keeps dirt out). I also colour code the remotes and the hoses with paint so there's no confusion connecting the right cylinder to the right valve (I'm easily confused ).

 

[canoetrpr]

Herringchoker - thats a great idea! You must mean that the work ports for the same stack have the oppositte QD. Never would have thought about that.... pretty smart. I will do that too.

Good thing is I am setting up enough spools that I should never have to take things like the TnT hoses off.