Help!! Need snow clearing advice from Northern friends

[diesel lover]

Yes, tractor is 4x4 and yes I will be getting some unusual seat time ;-) Thanks y'all.

no matter the type of tires, if it has 4wd that will be 10x better than just 2wd. A lot if tread is good to have. Turf tires with 4wd even do pretty well in snow. Good luck out there

 

[tcartwri]

Another thing, for a one time use you can pretty much make an angle plow for your loader out of scrap lumber... Will be ten times faster than using the bucket. You must take pictures though!

 

[Buckgnarly]

Bucket all the way, especially with 14". Before the bucket loads up too much, try to push off the road left or right, especially if you have a built up road surface.

You can probably push 6-7" pretty easily, so getting out twice should be enough.

I envy you guys that see melting, banks and piles here can get old fast!

 

[MossRoad]

Dude! You have a huge tractor with 4x4 and an FEL( very nice, by the way). 14" is not that much snow for that size of tractor. Just put the bucket down in float, curl it back just a bit so it doesn't grab the dirt and drive forward. Once a large pile builds up in the bucket it should just slide along and act like a plow. Drive right down the center of the road. That will open up a nice path. Then go back and repeat on the edges to widen the road. Occasionally you may have to dump some off the side of the road, but not that often. If you're worried about too much accumulation, do it every time the snow reaches 3-4" deep. Send pictures! :thumbsup:

 

[jel1988]

Use the loader let it fill up and use it as a snow plow until you start to spin. Back up a bit dump your bucket off to the side repeat until you create a single path, then widen it out. Don't push all your gravel off the road. The power just went out for a minute, tree limbs are falling the whole place is icing up, stayin off the roads today. Good luck ya'll from the low county, Pawleys Is SC.

 

[s219]

Yep, front loader with bucket in float and heel of bucket on ground so that the cutting edge is slightly above gravel. Will get you through the worst of it. Box blade would probably be of little to no benefit, but will increase traction so I'd hang it off the three point hitch for ballast if nothing else!!

 

[Vtnewbie]

I second what MossRoad said. Your tractor is plenty big enough, no need to turn and dump every couple of feet - just push through and make a lane down the middle. You can then come back to make it purty if you need to. Since the road is on a hill, you can use gravity to help get the snow off to the downhill side.

I pushed 30 inches of snow with my tractor (roughly the same size range as yours - granted I did have chains on). One more thing, if you start to slide downhill, be ready to drop that box blade with the scarifiers all the way down! It will stop you when the brakes can't.

 

[Dr_Zinj]

What Dave said. It also depends on whether the drive was good and frozen solid before the snow fell. If it's frozen solid, you shouldn't have to worry too much about scraping up the gravel. Otherwise you'll need to keep an eye on the bucket and hover it about an inch up to avoid that.

I'd also make sure you check your hydraulic lines before starting up; and cycle the pistons fully before actually doing your plowing run.

I estimate it will take you about 3 to 5 hours to completely clear your private road. Make sure you bundle up and watch for frostbite and hypothermia. If your fingers or nose are going numb, time to stop and go warm up.

 

[CDN Farm Boy]

For the hill, I'd recommend plowing UP the hill. Sounds backwards but it can save you from getting stuck. If you plow from the top down and get too big of a pile to push, you may not have the traction to back up and adjust. If you are pushing up the hill and too big of a pile builds up, you can always back down in the clear path to adjust your line. Granted, given the same snowfall, it takes more traction to plow up than down but much less chance of being stuck.

Good luck

 

[NorTracNY]

I hope that tractor is hydrostatic. I'd actually suggest waiting until the snow is nearly done. The amount of snow is not going to be an issue for a large tractor. It will take a long time to do a 1/2mi. It's not the best thing to do for a FEL, but I would consider tcartwri's suggestion of making an angled plow on your FEL. If you do this it would be 10X faster and I'd suggest going out every 4-6". Good luck.