Snow Equipment Owning/Operating Discharge distance ?

[timbertime]

Hey guys I have a 4100 JD (20hp) and just picked up a used 48" 3 point blower that was from tsc, model ts-48. I first used it yesterday and was pretty disappointed with its operation. I was lucky if I was getting 10 feet of distance out of the discharge chute. It was a pretty wet and heavy 10" snowfall, but really only 10 feet? It has an 18" four blade fan that spins at pto speed. The fan blade doesn't spin very close to the fan housing, so maybe something could be improved there? What speed is the fan blade suppose to run, I've never had a 3 point blower so is there suppose to be a gear box to step the 540s up and this one was meant to run at 1000rpm? Or is this all I should expect from this turd. Thanks!

 

[PHPaul]

You might try an Impeller Kit. It uses rubber flaps to seal between the impeller blades and the housing.

 

[dave1949]

If you can tell who made it, look up that model online to see what pto speed it is made for maybe.

 

[timbertime]

Found a pic the wifey took while I was out

 

[timbertime]

If you can tell who made it, look up that model online to see what pto speed it is made for maybe.

I tried looking it up with no success. It's from tsc model ts-48, it's made in Canada. Thought someone would have said how fast their fan blades spin but no luck yet.

 

[themichelob]

timbertime--"wet and heavy snow" is not going to fly like dry powder. In fact, 10 feet isn't all that bad under those conditions. There have been times when I was happy my blower moved snow at all! I think it's a little early to label your unit a "turd". Give it some time under varying conditions to evaluate performance. Regards, Mike

 

[ruffdog]

I have seen some blowers impeller blades that were only 2" deep. The blades on my Lorenz are 6" deep and have no problem throwing snow.

 

[CobyRupert]

View attachment 351629

Found a pic the wifey took while I was out

From the quantity of snow in the chute, it looks like blower is heavily loaded . That is, it's being fed more snow than it can handle at that rpm- Which is sort of what you're asking: Are rpms too slow? Sort of looks like it. Was tractor rpms bogging down? Did snow blow throw farther if you slowed ground speed down and didn't load the blower so much? That is, I think the real test is how far did it throw if you only fed a little snow into it? If that was only 10' or a little more, then yes you probably have a gearing/rpm issue.

 

[Dutch445]

Like Coby said don't give up on it yet. there may be some things you can do to
improve it's performance, like lining the chute or impellar housing. Also, snow conditions
can dictate how far snow is thrown. You will usually find out that the snow goes further
in 1 direction than the other, depending on how much your chute is trying to bend the snow.
On my front mount, if i throw it with the direction of the impellar, it throws further than the
other direction where the snow is changing direction and putting more pressure on the chute.
also, make sure your rpm's are up there at least where it says "540" , it won't hurt it to
push a little past that if heavier snow if you can. i doubt the blower is designed for anything
but 540. but you only have 20 engine HP there, so 15-16 at the pto isn't really all that much
for deep snow.

 

[timbertime]

I had the throttle wide open and the tach needle was well past the 540 mark. It never came close to bogging down or slowing the engine even a little. It absolutely wasn't a hp issue. I felt it was a velocity problem. The distance did not change if I feed less snow into the blower. My dads little case 446 with a single stage blower easily tossed the same snowfall two to three times as far. I guess I was expecting it to do better. If I blew from the center of the driveway I couldn't blow it over the edge and would end up double blowing everything. I'll wax up the fan housing and spray her down with some silicone spray and add some rubber sweepers to ends of the fan then hopefully give everyone an update of how much better this performs. We'll see on the next snowfall, thanks for all the responses guys!

 

[Cam-Saskatoon Canada]

Just a thought, but I had something similar to that once and I found out that the shear pin had, well, sheared off but part of it was still in there. As a result, there was quite a bit of slippage so that the blower was only running at half speed. Might be something to check.

 

[grsthegreat]

i cant tell how het the snow is by the pic, but i used to have a JD870 with 25HP at the PTO and used a 60" snowblower, 2 stage unit. When the snow was real wet, it did slug up the chute at times, and didnt shoot very far. But if ui bumped the tractor into LOW gear reverse 1.5MPH as far as i remember) it did alot better job throwing wet snow.

Try slowing the rig down if you can. The main reason i dumped the 870 was it only had 3 reverse speeds... One too slow, one too fast and one that was sometimes just right. I sure love my HST unit now.

 

[tcartwri]

View attachment 351629

Found a pic the wifey took while I was out

Yeah, that's not right.

 

[rsallen]

My guess is you've got a blower that's geared for 1100 rather than 540 rpm input.

Join the crowd, I've got one. It only throws snow 15 or 20 feet now instead of the 30 to 40 feet it did when I had a dual speed pto.
Still trying to figure what I'm going to do about it.

 

[timbertime]

i cant tell how het the snow is by the pic, but i used to have a JD870 with 25HP at the PTO and used a 60" snowblower, 2 stage unit. When the snow was real wet, it did slug up the chute at times, and didnt shoot very far. But if ui bumped the tractor into LOW gear reverse 1.5MPH as far as i remember) it did alot better job throwing wet snow.

Try slowing the rig down if you can. The main reason i dumped the 870 was it only had 3 reverse speeds... One too slow, one too fast and one that was sometimes just right. I sure love my HST unit now.

Yeah I have a hydro rig and even inching along it didn't do well.

 

[timbertime]

My guess is you've got a blower that's geared for 1100 rather than 540 rpm input.

Join the crowd, I've got one. It only throws snow 15 or 20 feet now instead of the 30 to 40 feet it did when I had a dual speed pto.
Still trying to figure what I'm going to do about it.

That was my original thought! So you guys that have a 540 blower, is your fan running at 540 rpm or is there a gear box stepping the speed up? Or same thing for you 1000 rpm guys, is your fan speed direct or a gear box stepping it down?

 

[grsthegreat]

That was my original thought! So you guys that have a 540 blower, is your fan running at 540 rpm or is there a gear box stepping the speed up? Or same thing for you 1000 rpm guys, is your fan speed direct or a gear box stepping it down?

my old farmking ran at 540 ...no gearing to change that.

 

[dave1949]

That was my original thought! So you guys that have a 540 blower, is your fan running at 540 rpm or is there a gear box stepping the speed up? Or same thing for you 1000 rpm guys, is your fan speed direct or a gear box stepping it down?

This is what the brochure says for my Frontier blower:
PTO speed is 540, impeller speed is 540, auger speed 190

There is a gearbox, but apparently the PTO shaft rpm's are passed straight through. The gear box also drives and provides the 90* turn for the auger chain sprocket shaft.

 

[ruffdog]

Same with my Lorenz blower. It runs 540rpm and the gear box is straight through to the impeller. Do the 1000rpm blowers gear down the impeller? It would be easy to check just by rolling it over by hand.

 

[rekees4300]

It was a pretty wet and heavy 10" snowfall, but really only 10 feet?

Have Frontier 3 point blower with JD4300 (32hp). At 540 rpm it will throw dry snow 30-40 feet but wet snow only about 10-15 feet. The moisture content makes a BIG difference.