Snow Snow

[Charlie_Iliff]

Did a little plowing this morning, and will have to do some more this afternoon. We have a bit more snow than predicted, maybe 6 inches. I found that as long as I keep the speed up, it does a fine job. No problem with turf tires. And the button on the joystick to turn the blade is great, when I remember to press it. If I don't, it tilts the blade and things don't work quite right.
If it keeps snowing, I may actually learn how to do it.
In the mean time, neighbors may wonder why the piles beside the road have those funny ziz zags.

 

[Scott_F]

Charlie,
I plowed a little bit of slush this morning. We had about 3-4" of snow before it started raining. As I expected, it works great on the pavement, but makes a mess of my gravel drive. I was hoping to let it ride on the guide wheels with the blade tilted to leave an inch or so of snow, but it's just too uneven - once it starts picking up gravel, it just keeps digging down. It's also a trick to get the right combination of blade tilt and angle to keep one end of the blade from digging in.

Once I got to the end of my private street, I was eyeing the main drag, thinking, " I could do that..." but I was getting pretty wet from the rain, so I went home.

Scott

 

[Charlie_Iliff]

Scott:
I'm on my way now to clear the 4" or so since my last attempt. It certainly does dig into anything but asphalt, sometimes climbing up on the blade and retarding the pace abruptly. Until I get a bit of practice, however, I'm not sure I shouldn't attribute that to operator error.

 

[Sedgewood]

Charlie: <font color=red>It certainly does dig into anything but asphalt, sometimes climbing up on the blade and retarding the pace abruptly.</font color=red>

That was my experience too with our first snow a couple weeks ago. Now the ground is frozen and hopefully it'll go a bit better. We have about 2 inches here now (4pm) and it's still snowing, hardly enough to bother with but I'll probably push it around just to see how it goes, once it stops snowing. Sure is tricky to get it set right as Scott says.

BTW, it was 8 degrees the other morning and as I walked by PT I thought, what the heck. Started right up! Sorta. After some coughing & wheezing. Amazing.

Sedgewood

 

[MossRoad]

If its any consolation, mine will do the same thing. I find that if I go with a less agressive angle, the gauge wheels seem to work better. On my asphalt driveway it scrapes right down to the pavement with a moderate angle to the plow. If I increase the angle, say to the right, the left end tends to come up off the ground. I compensate by tipping the blade forward until it meets the ground. Have any of you attempted to change the spacers around on the gauge wheels to adjust the height? I might try that if we get more snow. Only had about 4 inches total so far this week.

 

[Charlie_Iliff]

Haven't messed with the gauge wheels yet. I just finished cleaning the asphalt. It did very well, so I think I'll try to get used to the handling characteristics before I change anything. With the blade angled, a couple of times I got the machine turned in the middle. I found it best to stop and sort it out, otherwise it made a bit of a mess.
Although the job I did today isn't perfect, it was fast and if it warms a bit, the blacktop will be clean. Sure beats doing it with the bucket on the front of the 2240 JD.

 

[MossRoad]

Funny you should mention the bucket. I was tempted to put on the large bucket and mess around with it in the snow, however, with being able to lift the snow blade so high I can pile it up probably better than with the bucket.

Another thing; I was looking at the leaf plows in the other thread and it sure looks like my snow plow with slots. I might try that for leaves next fall instead of the bucket. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Well it is 5pm and we are up to 9 inches in CT - I don't have any experience with it on gravel - but the unit really does an awesome job on aspalt

 

[PTRich]

If you experiment with the wheels you will get better results. If you put all the spacers under the plow the farthest part of the plow will dig into the ground first. If you put all the spacers on top of the plow the closest part of the plow will dig into the ground. This is when the plow is on angle. The trick is to find the perfect amount of spacers to put under the plow. I like the far part of the plow to be just a little bit higher than the closer. That way I don't dig into the middle of the driveway. I put 2 spacers under the plow. Remember that as you change the spacers you change the plane the plow drops from thus changing what part of the plow touches the gravel first.

 

[bubenberg]

Mr. M.R. we did 12 hours of large bucket snow mowing today. I kept up with my much larger Kubota, who's operator is very capable. the reason he can push more at one time but there are allot of empty "backing ups". The 425 pushes less but can push in both direction with little manoeuvring. it can also do small steps, sidewalks etc. my kubota crew needs foot folk to shovel in, not the 425.

i think you are right the wings on my Jerco leaf rake would come in handy. but i would not make it any larger. as the wet leaves froze, i quite often had to use full trottle to move these wet piles of leaves and wet snow must cause the same demand for additional power. I hope to put hydraulics to the leaf rake, that will allow me to help the operator of our municipal size leaf vac, to move piles closer to the vac shoot. a lighter belting on the bottom (to replace the teeth) and replace the existing wings with the tougher rubber, the kind Sedgwood bought for his snow plow (from pt while we were down there). the reason for the modifications are: banging into trees, fences, gates you name it, rubber is a little more forgiving then my reinforced frame (bedframe angle iron).