Snow Attachments 540 PTO too slow for 3 pt snow blower

[jonstark]

I have a 1990 Kubota L3010 with a single speed 540 PTO. It is too slow for my 3 pt snow blower as the snow dribbles out and it gets clogged up far too often.

Is there a gearbox or mod I can install in between the PTO and snow blower to increase the drive speed into the snow blower?

Thanks for your advice.
jon

 

[Industrial Toys]

Some snow blowers just arn't worth the price of the scrap! Seriously, I would switch blowers!

But I do have such a gearbox. Got it for a hundred bucks from a tractor wrecker. Made by JD for an old crawler I guess. Bought it to try and run a 15KW PTO genset off my JD 770, so I didn't have to run the tractor wide open when I just wanted to power one light bulb! Project failed completely! No torque at that speed or the governor wasn't set up to do that!

I was at a farm show once and was intensly interested in a blower that REALLY blew snow, from watching the videos. They were quite expensive and the sales A/H said how they were just such higher quality then everyone else accounting for their high performance.

It all made sense, when I realized they were running their PTO at 1000!

 

[Baby Grand]

Any chance the gap between the impeller blades and the housing is too large from wear or damage or just never being right from the start? I've heard that closing up that gap can have a dramatic effect on performance.

 

[jel1988]

What type of snow are you blowing? Snow blowers work the best in cold dry snow. If you working in wet snow it will just puke out the shute!

 

[diesel lover]

If your Shute is clogging you may need to go down to a lower gear. Snow blowing takes time. It's very dramatic between 4 of our tractors what the difference is when it comes to snow blowing with our 3 pt blower. 3 of our tractors have a lower reverse and this makes a world of difference.

I would really like to snow blow with a hydrostatic . When the snow starts to get heavy for the blower let your foot up and as soon as it clears apply your foot on the pedal again

 

[Industrial Toys]

This is so true. I have never had a gear transmission with just the right speed for blowing snow, especially if you have to do it in reverse. Thank god my JD 6200 (totally junk manual trans) has a wet clutch! But that makes for a really poor operation as the blower is going from load to no load.

Hydro is the ONLY way to go for blowing snow!

 

[jonstark]

The impeller diameter is smaller than others I have seen leading me to believe it's made for 1000RPM. No data on the identification tag.

Luckily I have HST and can creeeeep along.
It works on only the driest, lightest of snow which, thankfully this year, is what we've been getting.

Looking for a way to bump up the drive speed at either end of the input.

Ideas? No shop. Working in the woods with stone axes and bear skins for tools. Can't fabricate for beans either. Gotta be bolt-on.

jon

 

[Pillager]

The impeller diameter is smaller than others I have seen leading me to believe it's made for 1000RPM. No data on the identification tag.

Luckily I have HST and can creeeeep along.
It works on only the driest, lightest of snow which, thankfully this year, is what we've been getting.

Looking for a way to bump up the drive speed at either end of the input.

Ideas? No shop. Working in the woods with stone axes and bear skins for tools. Can't fabricate for beans either. Gotta be bolt-on.

jon

Sounds like you've already figured out your blower is made for 1000 rpm and not your 540 rpm. While there are gearboxes that would take a 540 input and output 1000, I doubt you have the horsepower to do it. A loose rule of thumb would be that nearly doubling the rpm to 1000 means you need double the horsepower to be able to do the same work it does at 540. Your simplest solution all around would to find a blower designed for 540, they are more popular than 1000 to begin with and it shouldn't be hard to find a good used one, easier than trying to find a gearbox, getting it hooked up and hoping it's going to work out.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I was going to mention fan size. It's important as obviously the speed increases dramatically with increased diameter. It's quite obviously the major issue.

I say again. Get a different blower!

If you change the input speed, the auger will probably be going too fast and you will bust shear bolts. Unless it is for 1000 rpm, but then your auger would be going extremely slowly on 540. Probably too slow to do any useful work.

 

[dave1949]

There are pto speed changing gearboxes that are inserted between the tractor pto shaft and the driveshaft.
Hub City Inc - Model 390 PTO Speed Changer

That is one example. If you Google "540 pto to 1000 pto" you can some others. Whether that is a good solution, I don't know.