Front-End Loader Snow plow for John Deere 990

[JaceCrane]

I am toying with the idea of switching from a rear scraper blade to a front mounted snowplow.

What I am stuck on is, I feel a frame mounted plow would be better than a plow mounted on the FEL due to constant “racking” pressure on the FEL arms. But what I am finding is that there are very few frame mounted plows out there and tons of FEL mounted plows. So maybe my thoughts need to change.

The other benefit to using a frame mounted plow in my situation is that I can use the loader controls for the plow rather than a manual snowplow on the FEL.

What are your thoughts on frame mounted vs FEL mounted?

Any suggestions on brands of either?

What size blades do you suggest for a 40hp tractor? I was leaning toward an 72” or 84”.

 

[LouNY]

I have seen several tractors with frame mounted snow plows around, they work quite well.
Most of them are pickup plows that have been attached to the front of the tractor.
One issue to watch is the height of the mounting most pickup plows are mounted low to have the correct attack angle on the blade which will reduce your clearance.
The heavier front mounted tractor blades will usually have a push bar or X frame from the bottom of the blade mount.

got interrupted for a few minutes;

normally on the heavy duty style the push bar will come back to the drawbar mount, while the X type will come back to the rear axle mounting.
This puts the push forces back where the tractor is designed to have them.

 

[nybirdman]

I had(have) both;an L3130 HST with the factory sub-frame and six ft.snow plow:currently a eight ft.FEL mounted on a L4240 HSTC.
Negative with the sub-frame is you have to remove the FEL and can't "lift" and push snow piles and can't easily put the bucket back on.I believe it is a stronger system but haven't had any problems in ten years with my FEL mounted plow.