QA FEL Snowblower

[a5t1]

Here is my T293 with a converted 3 point snow blower to QA. The blower is an older farm king with a 23hp Briggs and Stratton Vanguard. The advantage to this vs PTO driven is ease of removal. If I want to put the bucket back on to move snow around, same QA procedure. The downside is this isn't' shaft driven. This year will be the first test using the proper reduction for the blower. Full throttle on the briggs will yield (a calculated) 548 rpm on the blower. I also converted the manual chute rotation to an electric version using a window motor from the junkyard. Let me know your thoughts...

 

[tractorgp]

Here is my T293 with a converted 3 point snow blower to QA. The blower is an older farm king with a 23hp Briggs and Stratton Vanguard. The advantage to this vs PTO driven is ease of removal. If I want to put the bucket back on to move snow around, same QA procedure. The downside is this isn't' shaft driven. This year will be the first test using the proper reduction for the blower. Full throttle on the briggs will yield (a calculated) 548 rpm on the blower. I also converted the manual chute rotation to an electric version using a window motor from the junkyard. Let me know your thoughts...

View attachment 397924

Like the idea, I was thinking along the same lines but considering attaching the snowblower directly to the bucket. Probably won't do it as I have a good Kubota rear mounted blower... but when the neck starts to get creaky I might have to rethink

 

[George2615]

Seems like it should work with a 23HP motor. How did you adapt the motor? Did you use gears and chain or belt and pulleys? And what size diameter. Others thinking of doing this will want to know. Maybe add some pics of the connection from motor to blower.

 

[a5t1]

I'll work on getting some more pictures up. Then I'll go into detail on the reduction.

 

[skyhook]

Looks interesting,How wide is the blower?

 

[Everhard]

Could you take a few more pictures? Really like the idea, have you had a chance to try it out yet?

Everhard.

 

[a5t1]

The blower is 5' wide.

Here is the first picture, not the best as my cell phone was dying and I couldn't use the flash. It's belt driven to a carrier shaft. That shaft is chain driven to the snowblower itself.

I was having two main issues:

1) it was throwing the belts. I *think* I have it resolved now.

2) It is not throwing snow very far. This could be an RPM issue. ( I just painted the chute and I'm looking for belting to bolt to the second stage wheel to assist in throwing the snow.

The rated top speed on that engine is 3600 RPM. To gear it down I went with a ~3" pulley on the engine and a 6.45" pulley on the carrier shaft. That gives me about 1646. Then I used a 10 tooth sprocket on the carrier shaft and a 30 tooth on the blower itself. That gave me an estimated 548 RPM on the blower.

I took a measurement this afternoon and the blower sprocket is turning at about 500 RPM. This isn't too surprising as the engine probably isn't running at a full 3600 rpm and the pulleys sizes were based on what I could find available. In most cases 40 RPM isn't a big deal, but I need to recover that in order to get the speed up.

I'll see what other pulleys I can find and adjust accordingly.


To summarize, it works. Its works better now than it did before as I have much more power and the motor doesn't bog down like it did last year. The downside, at this point, is not having enough speed to throw the snow. I haven't used it since painting the chute. I'll post updated when I get them

 

[a5t1]

BTW, the total cost for the pulleys, shaft, sprockets, chain, etc was about $150.

 

[a5t1]

I just ordered a 27 tooth sprocket, that should bring me up to 559 RPM if the error stays the same. Then I can throttle down slightly and be right in that 540 spot. I don't think spinning the implement 10-15 RPM over will be a big deal.

 

[skyhook]

Why are you trying to get this to run at 540rpms?
This could be the reason your not throwing snow far enough.
I'm not sure but maybe these are made to rev higher than a rear pto speed.

 

[a5t1]

Because the implement is supposed to be driven off of a tractor with the rear PTO spinning at 540rpm.

 

[skyhook]

Oh, I forgot it was originally a 3 point blower,

 

[leonz]

The Hanson engine driven snow caster was a chain driven unit.

The problem is torque and the lack of it as the impeller did not have
adequate torque to overcome the heavy load on the impeller as the
open cross auger force fed the snow to the center and the speed of
the truck affected its efficiency.

The only way to overcome this is to install a fly wheel to increase
the available torque to the impeller.

Using the old engine driven three point hitch MOTT flail mowers in the example
they had a 4 cylinder Wisconsin engine for power and they never lacked for power
or torque.

If you used a Wisconsin engine there would be no problem as the engine has enough
torque to use a chain drive system. A belt drive will slip and continue to slip due to heat
and melt water from the snow being cast away.

The manual throttle setting would allow you to use a radar speed gun or hand held tachometer
gauge to find the original 540 drive shaft speed to deliver the proper RPM to create the torque
needed for the work.

The impeller is doing most all the work and the open cross auger is simply loafing along.

If a closed auger was used with narrow flighting 2 inch height with 4 inch spacing with a
15 degree slope it would require even less energy to operate and be a very efficient
single or two stage stage snow caster and the snow would be cast over a much
longer distance as the snow is being fed into the impeller at a much lower rate
preventing flooding/clogging.

 

[a5t1]

I'm a little confused on your post - I'm not sure if you're trying to make suggestions on how to improve it or simply saying it won't work?

I've used this engine and blower setup last year and it cleared a record snowfall in the UP of MI. The problem was it wasn't "geared" correctly. I could only run about 1/2 throttle on the engine. The engine to blower was entirely belt driven will very long ~48" belts. It was hard to keep enough tension on them to keep them from slipping. It worked, just not as well as I would like it to.

This "redesign" seems to work much better, the first test run I made with the blower worked fairly well - the engine didn't bog down and I didn't observe any belt slipping as the engine was running close to full throttle so I had adequate power. We'll see if getting the final drive up to 540 rpm resolves my issue.

I thought about going entirely chain driven, however, the belts have a safety factor.

I'm working on a cover to protect the belts / engine from blowing snow, which would make the belts slip.

My setup also has a manual throttle so I can set the correct speed. I'm "geared" too low right now, full throttle only turns the blower at ~500rpm. I used an electronic tach. gauge to get the RPM.

An interesting side note, this graph from briggs shows that last year I was probably only getting around 18hp, less with power transfer loss.


View attachment briggs dyno graph.pdf

 

[leonz]

I mentioned the 4 cylinder wisconsins as they are a go to source for both power and torque



If you used a Hilliard slip clutch with a double roller chain drive housing
(used for go carts as standard equipment)
to power the gearbox shaft which rotates the impeller you would solve all your
problems.

have you checked the space between the impeller paddles and the housing??? that is a major issue
and you may need one of "Clarence's Iimpeller Kits to make it work better.

 

[a5t1]

Thanks, if the Briggs can't do the job I'll keep an eye out for one of the wisconsins.


Do you have a link to a Hilliard slip clutch? I used surplus center to order my pulleys / sprockets. It was easy to filter on bore size, tooth count, etc. The slip clutch is a good idea, just need to see one and also have to consider the price.


I haven't measured but I'm working on getting some belting / heavy rubber to bolt onto the paddles.

 

[leonz]

Home - Hilliard Corporation

It will be faster for you to buy a "complete" kit from Clarence as it is $33.00 from what i remember

 

[a5t1]

I looked at that Hilliard site, also saw some of their products on surplus center. Didn't see anything with a 1 1/8" bore, 60p double sprocket...

 

[a5t1]

Something like this:

3/4" BORE 40/41 PITCH 10 TOOTH CENTRIFUGAL CLUTCH


would work if I could find the right HP rating, pitch and bore size.

It's easy to say XXXX is the best way to go. Finding that exact part is the challenge, then seeing what the cost is, is the second.

I could have just bought a commercial version of what I'm using (which is also belt driven), but they cost around $7000.

 

[Everhard]

If you stick with the belts how about adding in a tensioner pully? (kinda like on a fan belt setup?) Thanks for all the info. I just picked up a blower, this winter I'll use it on the back but I might try to fab something up for next winter. Please keep us posted with any changes you make!

E.