PTO snowblower

[pbbraun]

I live in Evergreen Colorado at 8000 feet elevation.

This is my first posting as I have given up on my John Deere 2WD 125 with 46" plow suitcase weights and chains to clear my relatively steep blacktop driveway. Going up hill with ice the wheels spin and sparks fly.

I just purchased 2005 Kubota BX 1500 (4WD) with mower deck and FEL. It has 377 hours on it. I paid $6200 for it and will pay $696 for shipping

I plan to use the FEL to plow snow but would like to think about other options.

It seems to me that with the rear 3Pt and quick hitch you could attach a walk behind self powered snow blower to the tractor. Has anyone tried that?

Also could you use the rear PTO and the quickhitch to mount the blower part of the walk behind 2 stage snow blower to the tractor? I would find a snowblower with a bad engine and remove the engine. One challange here would be to connect the shaft of the snowblower to the PTO.

These options seem too simple to work but who knows.

Would appreciate any suggestions/comments.

This is a great website and really helped me with my BX 1500 purchase.

Bill

 

[art]

Break down and buy a 48" snowblower for the three point hitch.

 

[chipsndust]

Break down and buy a 48" snowblower for the three point hitch.

+1
I wouldn't try to cobble something up that may or may not work, and would probably hurt me or my tractor, especially when there is already an established, dependable implement available.

 

[radioman]

oh geez- . anything is possible if you have the fab skills. Can it be done? sure why not? will it be safe? I am not sure, depends on how you make it. The question that comes to mind is , whats the current rpm speed the augers run at for said dead blower ? The rear pto runs at 540. DO you need higher speeds ? Since it will be used on a steep blacktop drive, you might want to mount it on the front. The only thing is the mid pto runs 2500 pms.

The other thing I am thinking is that it seems to me that most snowblowers have no real gearings for augers and its just sit in there in metal pocket so I doubt it's gonna last long.

 

[chipsndust]

oh geez- . anything is possible if you have the fab skills. Can it be done? sure why not? will it be safe? I am not sure, depends on how you make it. The question that comes to mind is , whats the current rpm speed the augers run at for said dead blower ? The rear pto runs at 540. DO you need higher speeds ? Since it will be used on a steep blacktop drive, you might want to mount it on the front. The only thing is the mid pto runs 2500 pms.

The other thing I am thinking is that it seems to me that most snowblowers have no real gearings for augers and its just sit in there in metal pocket so I doubt it's gonna last long.

In addition to the points radioman makes, you would need an adapter of some sort to attach the PTO, and make sure the PTO shaft (which you will also need to come up with) is the right length.

 

[Max2310]

Yup, I'm sure you could. But I wouldn't, but I did thought about it. I don't think you time would be well invested since I don't think the metal gauge of a push model will suffice on a tractor.

Instead, I would consider a rear blade (I paid 400$ CAD for mine, 6' light duty) until you can afford a real 3 point hitch blower or found a good deal on a used one. Rear blade and a loader is a great combination but sure takes more time when you get allot of snow.

You may also want to consider using tire chains for that steep hill. Not sure if your black top will like this.

 

[KubotainNH]

I've thought about it too. The issues I see is the width of most walk behinds is not as wide as a tractors wheels and is the PTO going in the correct direction that the blower would need. I would need 4 feet wide for my little tractor. I put a plow on my Jeep instead, good to be warm with tunes.

 

[JoelD]

first, the blower would run counter clockwise (based on the blower chasis I just looked at in my garage), second, unlikely you'd find a bucket wide enough, a big walk behind is 36 inches or so, which I bet is to narrow for behind a tractor.

Besides that, I bet it would be easy to rig up.

PTO shaft with knuckle at either end, weld one end to the pulley on the blower and the other end would have standard 6 spline to slide onto tractor pto and then weld up quick frame with angle iron for 3 point.

RPM is a good question on the bucket pulley for the blower. Based on really rough math, 10 inch pulley on bucket and 2 inch pulley on engine shaft would give you around 700 rpm I think at 3500 engine rpm which most walk behind snowblower motors run at full throttle.

Your 540 maybe a tad slow.

Interesting idea, I really think the problem would be width of blower bucket.

Joel

 

[pbbraun]

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I will go with the scraper blade. I appreciate this discussion board and I am sure I will be following it in the future.

 

[Adrian Dang]

 

[KubotainNH]

Adrian, that's a neat setup. Did you modify an existing blower or buy it like that? Tell us more Looks like your chute is a hand crank, any thoughts to adding an electric motor like from a windshield wiper or power windows motor?

 

[Diamondpilot]

Second the rear blade. A FEL is not a good tool for snow removal because you can not angle off the snow.

Chris

 

[smiley]

Half the fun is building it. I had intentions of taking 2 lawn tractor type blowers, mounting them side by side on the front of my old Allis B and running a pto shaft to the front to power them. It would work on the back too. Then, I ran across a 5' Cub front mounted blower and mounted it all up, fired it up and found out the hard way that Cub pto's run backward of everybody else. Made a neat little snow sucker though. I never reversed the direction or built the dual blowers because I bought a 100 hp 4 wd massey with 7' rear blower that when time allows will be moved to the front.
Smiley

 

[Adrian Dang]

Adrian, that's a neat setup. Did you modify an existing blower or buy it like that? Tell us more Looks like your chute is a hand crank, any thoughts to adding an electric motor like from a windshield wiper or power windows motor?

about the chute adjustment,we now design a hydraulic motor or cylinder to rotate and adjust the chute and discharge part.

 

[David Devuono]

I am all about building it yourself. A BX1500 can't be more them 38-40 inches wide. I can envision a 30" walk behind with 4-6 inch wings. I run my homemade blower at 540RPM which is plenty. Your Kubota likely has 2spd rear PTO 540\1000. If you go with a blade you will need to install sliders if your driveway is gravel or uneven like a truck mount plow. Also snow plowing works better at speed and backing up fast has its own issues. Since you have a FEL, you could look at a 60" ATV plow mounted to the bucket. (But then you will want to buy a rear blade for summer dozing)