PHPaul
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2011
- Messages
- 760
- Location
- Downeast Maine
- Tractor
- Kubota B2650 with cab, Pasquali 986
I started with an old 12V boat winch I scrounged out of a dumpster. The original design used a wire rope drive with several wraps around the winch drum and connected to the chute in the same manner as the original manual crank. In practice, it didn't work all that well as I couldn't figure a way to keep enough tension on the wire rope to keep it from snarling back on itself and jamming on the winch drum. I built a winch mounting bracket that bolted to existing fixtures on the blower.
Plan "B" was to convert it to chain drive. This involved removing the winch drum, fabbing up a new axle to go in it's place and putting a #40 sprocket on it.
I also cleaned up the chain path by replacing the hex head bolts on the chute locator clips with carriage bolts, put a PVC chain guide on to keep the chain from snagging on the chute mount, and built a little tensioner to keep the chain from jumping the sprockets.
The whole thing is controlled from a DPDT Momentary toggle on a bracket on the ROPS, right where it's handy as I'm looking over my shoulder while blowing. The curly cord is my warning flasher.
As you can see, the chain clips to the original tab that the manual cable-and-crank system attached to, just used a master link on each end of the chain and through the holes on the tab. So, I haven't done anything I can't undo if for some reason I decide to put it back to original.
Plan "B" was to convert it to chain drive. This involved removing the winch drum, fabbing up a new axle to go in it's place and putting a #40 sprocket on it.
I also cleaned up the chain path by replacing the hex head bolts on the chute locator clips with carriage bolts, put a PVC chain guide on to keep the chain from snagging on the chute mount, and built a little tensioner to keep the chain from jumping the sprockets.
The whole thing is controlled from a DPDT Momentary toggle on a bracket on the ROPS, right where it's handy as I'm looking over my shoulder while blowing. The curly cord is my warning flasher.
As you can see, the chain clips to the original tab that the manual cable-and-crank system attached to, just used a master link on each end of the chain and through the holes on the tab. So, I haven't done anything I can't undo if for some reason I decide to put it back to original.
