Sweepster Rotary Broom - rebuild and modification

[dstig1]

Thanks, Mike! And Happy Thanksgiving all!

More progress. Got the wiring almost done, but still looking for a weatherpack connector to disconnect this to be able to split the loader from the tractor. I'll try Napa tomorrow as I have got them there in the past.

Lots of minor details addressed but the big one was getting the broom core and motor assembled. They said it took 41 broom wafer sections, and that is what they sent but I could only get 39 on it, following their directions. I'll see if it "settles in" or something and I still have the extra 2. Adding them on later will be very painful, no doubt, but I just don't see how they would fit. But the big item was to make sure you put the carriage bolts into the motor mount thingy BEFORE you mounted the motor to the core as there is no way in hades to put them in once you bolt on the motor shaft to the core. It would kill probably 2-3 hrs to take that all apart and reassemble again if you forgot. I remembered! (you can see them in the left picture sticking out below the motor)

The only way I can figure to mount it to the frame is to drive the tractor up to it and use the loader to angle/adjust the sweeper frame until I can connect it up. I'm guessing that will be fun... Getting closer!

 

[dstig1]

Got the broom mounted with the help of a neighbor to guide the tractor/loader into place to pick it off the jack stands. Then ran into a snag. I am now seeing that I should have put this together prior to powder coating and tested everything out. I guess I Ass-U-Med that being a commercial product I would not have to do anything new with the parts I reused without changing, but now I am seeing that this thing would greatly benefit from a hard stop so that the broom can't tip back too far. That would have been fairly easy to fab and weld on before, but now not so much. So here's a couple pics

And herein (below) lies the problem I see now. With the loader sitting on the ground, the broom bristles push the head back at a fairly decent angle, to the point where the pin for the angle cyl (circled in green) almost touches the shroud. I can see a dent from where some PO did that. If I could come up with a heavy duty hard stop in the center where the purple arrow is pointing, that might help, but I wish I had tried all this earlier as there are a couple other details that I would have like to improve, if I knew better.

The hoses in red from the check valve spin-down loop to the motor are easy enough as nothing much changes there, but the blue hoses are a problem. The one on the left is a very short path as shown here and I am not sure if I can loop hoses enough to make it work if the head is allowed to angle back this much. So I may need to pause here and see if I can come up with a solution for that first. I'll get some time to play with it tomorrow more and see what my options are.

Oh yeah, and powder coat on the cylinder pins is waaaay too thick to alow the cyl ends to slide on, so that has to get wired wheeled off too... Yippee. I should have guessed that and masked them off. I ran into the same issue with the bearing on the free end of the broom core. I started on removing the paint here, as you may be able to see if you zoom in.

 

[dstig1]

Holy Heap O' Hoses, Batman!!!

Yes, the hoses arrived and I got it all plumbed today. It appears all my lengths will work out just fine. I can raise the loader up quite a ways without any risk of the hoses to the pump going taught, and way more than I would ever want to raise it with the broom on anyways.

Haven't filled it yet and still waiting for the float springs to arrive so I can finish it off. But here's what it looks like now. That first photo is missing a couple of the return lines, but the rest were after completion.

 

[dstig1]

Almost there! Springs showed up yesterday. Only had enough time today to make these little keepers to stop the springs and chains from falling off when you release tension on them. Just a little leftover 1/2" DOM tubing that I drilled out the inside diameter a bit more and cross drilled for a 10-32 set screw. No real stress on them but I will probably add some loctite to keep them from loosening over time. Got them painted and tomorrow should be it for getting the final assembly done and filling it and giving it a trial! Fingers crossed that the hyd motor is good as this will be the first time it has been run in many years, as best I can tell...

 

[dstig1]

Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!
Houston We Have Liftoff!
It works! Woot! Woot!

I got the springs sorted out and in place, then filled it up (I need a better pump than the little plastic hand piston pump I have - took forever). Started it up at idle speed and after a few seconds for the fluid to work through it spun a little. Shut it off and checked it over, then tried it again and it was spinning! The wrong way! Arrgh. Not sure if I read the motor specs wrong or what but I was able to swap the 2 hoses to the motor around and didn't make a horrible mess like I was expecting. That worked and I slowly ran the speed up without issue. At least I managed to get the angle directions correct. 1 out of 2 ain't bad for mostly guessing...

We had a dusting of snow overnight, so I went out to give it a spin (pun intended). It throws snow great! The only thing I found is that you need to keep it in the sweet spot for contact. Too much down with the FEL and it stalls the broom/motor. So you need to keep your hand on the joystick to adjust slightly as you go, but not bad. This does make me wonder if this is normal or if perhaps the motor is worn out or something like that. For now, I will live with it and look into it to see what i can find in the manual under troubleshooting.

No video yet as it was dark and I wasn't set up for it. I will get some video when I get a chance and post it here. Final pic of the springs in place below. Only thing left to do is some better support for the hoses. I just used a rope to keep them off the ground for now.

Ran for about 30 min blowing off the snow and noticed the snow spray was "steaming" off the tank, so I decided to stop and check temps. IR gun had the tank at 120-130ish so no problem there. I guess snow spray just steams off real easy. I will continue to monitor temps for now until I have a good idea how it is going. I pretty much had it running the whole time too, rather than stopping and starting it many times.

What a relief that is to have it done and working!

 

[mike0000]

That’s awesome, Job well done!

Mike

 

[dstig1]

Thanks Mike! I used it for one more small snowfall the other day. Still getting used to it. Tank temps maxed out around 140-145 so still fine. It was a longer run, so not too surprising it was warmer. Still keeping an eye on it for now.

 

[Bill_M]

It works! Woot! Woot!

Dave,
Excellent work! it will serve you well for many years.
a couple of things I can tell you about those brooms & wafers in case you don't already know.
1. It is common to put 2 wafers on each end with the center ring matching not 90* like the rest of them are stacked.
2. Don't park the broom with down pressure on the bristles it will cause them to take a permanent set & cause it to hop as it rotates.
3. Ideal contact patch of 2" to 4" is best.
Any questions please ask.
Again excellent work!

Bill

 

[dstig1]

Thanks, Bill. I followed the instructions from Sweepster on building the core and they did not mention to put 2 on the ends. I have 2 left over so maybe that would have worked, but no way I am going to take it apart for that now.
I still haven't figured out the float to get ti to sit right without having to adjust it constantly, but I am working with it for now.

I did make a pair of simple stands to keep the brush off the ground. I don't see why the stands are optional with this. If you can't set it on the brush, you NEED some sort of stand to hold it up. Doesn't make sense to me...

 

[ponytug]

Dave- wonderful build series! Thanks for documenting what you did, and how you thought about doing it. Did you ever consider a diverted for spinning in reverse?

How did it work for you this winter?

All the best,

Peter

 

[dstig1]

Thanks, Peter. No, I did not consider having a need to spin it in reverse. I suppose if it was critical for some reason, I could just swap hoses, even if just for a couple minutes, like if something got wound up and needed to get unwound. I don't see a general need otherwise. It does actually have a diverter on it already but that is for the angle cylinder only.

It worked well overall. Best on smaller snowfalls, which was almost all of what we had this winter, and is most common here. Most snowfalls were 2-4" and even wet snow was not a problem at those depths. We had a couple big dumps including one late in the season when the snowbanks had built up a fair bit and I tried but found the broom not very useful, so I put the bucket on for that one, and used the bucket and rear blade.

The biggest issue I had by far was maintaining good ground/broom contact. As the angle of the ground changes you either start to lose contact or you get so much that it stalls the broom, so you are constantly adjusting the FEL joystick up and down in very tiny increments, and the control is just not that precise. This is why I am in the process of making a set of gage wheels for it. I am going adjustable whereas the factory makes a fixed set as an option I thought I had it figured out but my first trial showed them to be too short, so I got out the "steel stretcher" and am adding a few inches to each side now. Once it is done I'll post up pics and details here.

Now I need to make a storage dolly for the off season!

 

[dstig1]

Allright, finally time to update this. By the time I had time and got around to working on Casters to help guide the broom depth better, the season was done. No biggie as it will help next year in any case. So I put them in about the same place as the factory option but made mine adjustable and mounted them differently. I ran into some issues along the way...

First off, my CAD model of the broom was made with a tape measure and eyeball and apparently not very accurate. Not terribly surprising but the first iteration came in too short to do any good. This is interesting as the factory option would be even shorter. I think it has something to do with how this is mounted on the SSQA plate and the loader geometry being different than a skid steer. The only way to get the casters to make ground contact required rolling it back too much so the "feet" on the loader would be dragging. Well that wouldn't work so I extended them.

Here is the initial design. The adjustment is 2" hitch stock inside 2.5" receiver stock with a 3/4" Acme screw for the adjuster.

That little wood stand you see the broom sitting on later becomes part of my storage dolly. But like I said this was too short, so I extended it. Unlike wood and the mythical board stretcher, there is such a thing as a steel tube stretcher! And here it is!

After welding that out and grinding flush, they were ready to go. Yes, the joints were beveled fully to allow full penetration welds.

So here it is extended in the trial run. It appear to help but is not a perfect solution. But anything that makes controlling the height adjusting better is very welcome given how touchy it was to do manually. I also tweaked how the float springs worked by shortening the chain a bit to help the casters be more effective

Oh yeah, I also made a little retainer to keep the adjuster screw from moving once I get it set right. The tape was just temporary to keep the loose pin in place while I was sorting things out:

 

[dstig1]

Now the storage dolly. I scratched my head a while on this and this is what fell out. it seems to work, but I might need a couple more casters under the SSQA plate as most of the weight appears to be there and I think it could use extra support. I won't deal with that until I re-mount it to the tractor next winter. Some photos of it, plus the caster mounts fully painted, plus all tucked away in the back:



The 2 supports on the side are what was holding the broom off the ground when mounted on the tractor. 2 screws hold them onto the dolly so I can pull them and use them the same way again next winter.

Hopefully that is it for the mods and it will now work well for the remainder of my days! (yeah right...)

 

[mike0000]

Thanks for the update, mobile carts a great idea, Job Well Done!

Mike

 

[ArlyA]

I'm nervous those castors will take a beating...

 

[dstig1]

Thanks guys. This thing takes up a lot of space so i had to move things around to make a home for it, thus making the dolly pretty important. Fortunately the forks slide right under it too (that was my plan from the start...)

The casters are pretty similar to what the factory option uses, so I guess I expect them to hold up similarly. They are 8" rubber over cast iron, full swivel. I guess time will tell... Worst case they are easy to replace and were like $25-30 ea from Surplus Center so not real bad.

I don't expect I will need the adjustability long term as once I find the sweet spot, they will probably stay there for life, or maybe get adjusted if the broom ever wears down a lot, but with just residential use at my place, that seems unlikely to me.

 

[ponytug]

Again, great set of builds!

On the factory wheel height: SSQA tend to operate with the loader arms all the way down, locked down against the chassis, making for a very rigid mounting. If the sweeper is that low at the back, it looks to me as if you could compensate by moving the "Z" shaped bracket near the motor to a different hole, which might explain how the factory casters function. Pure speculation on my part.

I just got my own new to me broom running, and I am curious how you deal with road slope/camber. Do you angle the broom and adjust the height to compensate?

All the best, Peter

 

[dstig1]

Yeah, I figured it might be the different geometry between a tractor FEL and a skid steer that was the issue, but fortunately when you "Build it Yourself" you can make it work for any setup!

I used the angle function a lot at first but found that it was not as helpful as I expected. There are still times when i do use it, but a lot of my brooming is pretty much straight ahead and it works great. Certain sections of my driveway are best approached from one direction over the other due to slope/camber. It does not really float much side to side so it is easy to leave snow on one side in those cases. Often just coming at it from the opposite direction helps. I am hoping that the casters help me from the constant adjusting I have had to do so far to maintain contact while avoiding stalling the broom. I know it won't eliminate it, but am hoping it reduces it.

 

[ponytug]

Thanks, that helps a lot. I have draft control, which really helps control the height and down force, though the weight of the broom, as far out as it is, is pushing the limit of my draft controller.

All the best,

Peter

 

[dstig1]

Time for an update on this. When I mounted the broom back in Nov, I tested it out, like always to make sure it is operating correctly at the start of the season. Well if you recall, the angle cylinder is driven from a diverter on the unit and when you trigger the diverter, it sends quite a pressure spike though the system as a cylinder takes almost no fluid compared to spinning the motor. Well it appears I had been dragging the main pressure hose from the pump on the ground a bit and did not realize it...

Spun up the broom, all good. Hit the angle switch and BLOOSH fluid shooting out everywhere. Took a couple seconds of shock to get to the PTO button to stop it. Was easy to find the leak but the pressure spike blew out the hose where it had worn through partway. So that was fun with fluid EVERYWHERE. It was probably at most a couple quarts of fluid (out of 20 gal) but you know how a little oil goes a long way on making a mess... Got a new hose, this time 1 foot shorter so it won't drag and added spiral abrasion wrap to it. That was enough to get me through the season.

But then a new problem started to crop up in use. When I would trigger the angle cylinder, it worked fine to the right, but when you go to swing it back to the left it sometimes would just sit there. A few clicks and it would work out but it got worse and worse so I had to do something. At one point it really did not want to come back to straight and took several minutes to finally catch, so I left it centered then.

I tested a couple things on the diverter, but decided the better method here was to run the angle cylinder off my 3rd function instead. Easy to do and very controllable and no worries about that pressure spike, plus the broom keeps spinning while you change the angle.

Removing the diverter really simplifies all the plumbing on this. I had to get a couple new hoses and fittings and I used this opportunity to make a couple other improvements. The pressure gage is what I use to monitor the broom is still spinning good and not bogging down, so I got a bigger one that is 3000 psi vs 5000 on the old one so I can see it easier with better resolution.

So here is what the hose nest used to look like:

And now it's a lot simpler and back in business:

A few more photos:

I also cut the pump supply hose shorter at the same time to help avoid more hose dragging issues.

Big new gage up high where I can see it:

The real miracle is that I connected it all up correctly the first time and didn't have to go swap any hoses to get it right and make more of a mess... Woo hoo!