Snow Equipment Owning/Operating Snow Blower Hydraulic Chute Rotation: Cylinder or Motor??

[Trails End]

I'm preparing to order a 3pt snow blower and would like to determine if one
type of hydraulic chute rotation is better than the other! I would think that
the hydraulic motor would be less problematic than the cylinder in this
application (less chance of icing up), but I'm not sure.

 

[devildog1]

All I can tell you about is the hydraulic motor chute which I have on my L2674 Kubota 3 point snow blower, it preforms just great but you have to feather the rear remote so chute doesn't rotate to fast. I believe RAD Industry of Canada make this snow blower and many others, it's well built and quite heavy duty. I never had a hydro cylinder on one but I don't think there would be an issue either. What ever you decide make sure you buy one with the largest fan diameter you can for I believe it's best for clearing and throwing heavy snow. Good luck.
DevilDog

 

[Halftrack]

Devildog, you could put a restrictor on your rotator line to slow things down. TSC and most ag suppliers have them in stock. It is just a fitting with male and female ends and a small diameter hole. If it is then too slow, drill the hole a larger diameter. Trailsend, I have a cylinder on my blower with a cable apparatus to turn the chute and icing has never been an issue. I might be concerned with a hydraulic motor, if it had a chain drive to the chute and the sprockets iced up. Either way, I think the weak link is between the hydraulic device and the chute, whether it be cables, chains or linkages. The plus a cylinder has over a motor is cylinder can be pushed to the limit with no damage. If you run the motor too far, will it damage the linkage or the chute? Now, let it snow.

 

[PILOON]

I believe that you will discover that the cylinder type uses a cable to do the rotating as well as a pivot and arm.
By far the motor style is a neater installation and I'd suspect more trouble free.

 

[FatTire]

I have a plow on a UTV. It has a 12v motor to run the hydraulic lift. Last winter when I went to use the plow for the first time it blew a fuse. I installed a new fuse and it blew that one. Turns out that a tiny bit of water had gotten into the motor, frozen, and locked up the windings. It took a couple of hours to figure out what the problem was and correct it. On the other hand I haven't had problems with cylinders in cold weather.

 

[Trails End]

I should have been a little more specific in my original post. I plan on ordering a
Pronovost Puma 74 inch snowblower, with hydraulic chute rotation. The cylinder
rotation mechanism looks like the picture below.


The hydraulic motor mechanism looks like the following picture.


As you can see, the cylinder rotation mechanism appears to be more complicated
and might be more prone to jamming from ice, than the hydraulic motor mechanism.
Has anyone experienced problems of this nature with similar mechanisms?