Need to replace my chute

[supertaster]

I have just recently acquired a Dettson 6 ft snow blower and it had a "rough" homemade chute placed on top. I'm looking to source out a new chute or get information on a blueprint to make one....
The O.D. is 10" on the top of the fan housing where the chute would mount.
It is currently a manual rotation. there isn't a cable system installed, it was just set on top with a pin holding it's position. I was given a manual cable setup with the unit. It's blue (Lucknow) in colour, but shouldn't be an issue to customize.

Questions for me would be, if I was to build one, is there an "ideal" length for a chute, and if so, at what distance would I start to taper or curve the chute to get a good arc while still maintaining the snow speed out of the blower itself?

I'm sure there are lots of great opinions here. I'm new to the forum.
It will be attached to a Massey 35 Diesel.

 

[supertaster]

Is there a dealer willing to sell something since there aren't any ideas floating around for a custom design?

 

[DrainPondDesign]

If I could not locate an original repair part I'd take some measurements and start visiting friends with blowers and dealers to see if some other brand would fit or could be adapted to fit.

Good hunting

 

[PILOON]

As to length, you only need long to fill trucks and the shorter the better in order to avoid clogging with wet snow.
Many mfg's actually taper the chute as tapering increases velocity and therefor throws farthur but the downside is it clogs much more easily so a staight chute is actually best IMHO.
We recently made a chute for my buddy and for minimum friction we used straight (non tapered) PVC pipe as used in water mains (in your case you'd want 10").
The challenges are mainly to find the necessary stock and then glue it all together with PVC cement.
We found the results very satisfying as he never clogged even in the worst sticky snow conditions.
We came to this decision as we noticed that all the walk behinds pretty well now have gone to plastic chutes as well as I have experimented with lining my chute with plastic with good results.

 

[doxford jim]

We found the results very satisfying as he never clogged even in the worst sticky snow conditions.
We came to this decision as we noticed that all the walk behinds pretty well now have gone to plastic chutes as well as I have experimented with lining my chute with plastic with good results.[/QUOTE]


Hi Piloon,

What material have you used for lining SB chutes other than PVC pipe ? How about the HMWV or whatever it is called - the white teflon type material used for cuttings board etc. I know that material is very "slippery" but have not heard of it being available in a curved or pipe form.

Any help with preventing chute clogging must greatly improve the blower operation.

On another note - I recently acquired a winch fairlead for the cheap $50 Canadian Tire winch I picked up recently. Princess Auto has the fairlead on sale for around $30.00 - you couldn't make one for that price. At that price, the electric winch conversion, chute rotator setup just cannot be beat - less than $100

I would be very interested to hear of any other ways of improving chute efficiency.

Thx

Jim

 

[PILOON]

For chute lineing, even the dollar store kids snow sled sheets will work, a bit thin and hard to attach.
The material you would generally use will be a PVC sheet and PVC can be formed with a plunbers torch carefully applied.
Your metal chute will be your female mold.
If you had a pizza oven in your garage LOL, you would have the perfect oven to pre heat PVC flat stock and then simply press it in to comply with the curves of your chute.

I once moulded a windshield for my aircraft using the local pizza oven to heat it and then clamped it to the old shield as a mould.
Worked great, passed inspection and still flys 20 years later.

 

[henrysMFGC2310TBL]

Piloon, nice resolve for a chute. I have a blower without any chute and was looking at making one but your idea seems a lot simpler, do you have any pictures of the finished chute mounted? How about some basic dimensions, height, angle etc. This is an older Kobota blower that I am going to adapt onto my 2310 M/F, hopefully as a front mount. Thanks, Henry.

 

[PILOON]

Your blower will have a round section that stands proud of the frame by maybe 1-2".
Any PVC pipe whose I.D. fits over the protrusion freely will do the trick. In his case 8" pipe did the trick and the city had just left some cutoffs laying about after a repair job, so he was lucky. For the deflector end we used a 10" length, split with 2 taper cuts and bolted to form the swivel axis.
At the bottom we glued a 3/4" ring made by cutting off a 3/4" length of pipe, splitting it and stretching over the butt end of the chute tube. While stretching it over it did leave a slight gap but that did not hinder its job in keeping the chute cable from sliding off. That ring was also glued in place with a few flat head bolts added to assure it would not slip off. Being a plastic tube rotating around the frame stub chute it is very slippery and offers no resistance in rotating.

We then mounted a 'el cheepo' atv electric winch vertically nearby and cut cable to suitable length and wrapped 2 turns around the chute as our rotating power source.
Using the winch remote control he has 'seat' controlled rotation.
To use a winch you need to modify the cable clamping so as to clamp the center of the cable and prewind equally in both directions b4 you wind around the chute base.
My own blower is 'winch' rotated as well. Works great and real nice in a heated cab.

Sorry, no pics as he is not close by.

Note, if U locate a tube that is larger, simply cut out an appropriate strip on a table saw and glue the sides back together as the tube will spring back tight. In fact there is enough tension that it will want to bind the blade on a table saw.
(I have split many a tube for various projects, so I know)

 

[henrysMFGC2310TBL]

Thanks, yes the top of the blower is round so your idea will save me fabing the ring out of steel on my bender, Henry.