- Joined
- Sep 6, 2011
- Messages
- 3,328
- Location
- Philadelphia
- Tractor
- John Deere 3033R, 855 MFWD, 757 ZTrak; IH Cub Cadet 123
I'm back to my annual fight and frustration with plowing my asphalt driveway without destruction.
Equipment: Loader mounted plow (Frontier 72") on Deere 3033R
OEM edge: hardened steel 1/2" x 4" x 72" affixed with 6 carriage bolts
(Note Woods SB64S has since been sold, didn't really need it for this tractor.)
Ran this plow with factory edge the first year with the factory "inverted mushroom" shoes set to leave the plow 1/4" above the surface. Worked great for removing snow and the ice and slush we so often get in eastern PA, but it absolutely tore the hell out of my previously-smooth driveway. Issue is that we're a little hilly and slopey around here, so while driveway is smooth, it ain't flat. Plow edge would dig into asphalt any place that crowning put the edge on the drive before the shoes. Also had issues with corners of the plow edge digging into asphalt in some of the sloped tight turns.
Switched last year to a 1" x 4" x 72" polyurethane edge, affixed in place using a 1/4" x 2" x 72" stainless bar and the original carriage bolt holes:
Kept shoes set near that same 1/4" height, and this worked fine for snow, but just skidded over anything frozen. Was a real problem in one or two of our storms where precip alternated between snow and freezing rain (not uncommon, here).
Tried raising shoes to put the rubber hard on the ground, but the rubber just flexed up in-between each bolt location, to where it was wearing quickly at the bolts and leaving ice/sluch between:
It just never worked well, although maybe I gave up on it too soon. Adding more bolts might have improved it, but I feared the 1" thick too-soft edge would always just slip over anything frozen, and so it wasn't worth punching more holes in my plow to test that theory.
This year I ordered a 3/4" x 4" x 72" strip of UHMW, which I hope will be a happy compromise. I've heard varying opinions on what to do with the shoes and cutting edge height. I do believe that running completely shoe-less might be a good way to break the UHMW edge off if I hit anything less than flat (like the hard seam between my driveway and street), so that's probably not worth trying.
Am I on the right track? How do you folks run your skid shoes with UHMW edges?
Driveway is glassy smooth asphalt topcoated every 3rd year for decades. It's lumpy, it has some cracks, but it slippy smooth. Street (which I also plow across at end of my driveway) is oiled chipped every 3rd year so about as rough and abrasive a surface as you'll ever encounter. Think the asphalt version of coarse sandpaper.
Equipment: Loader mounted plow (Frontier 72") on Deere 3033R
OEM edge: hardened steel 1/2" x 4" x 72" affixed with 6 carriage bolts
(Note Woods SB64S has since been sold, didn't really need it for this tractor.)
Ran this plow with factory edge the first year with the factory "inverted mushroom" shoes set to leave the plow 1/4" above the surface. Worked great for removing snow and the ice and slush we so often get in eastern PA, but it absolutely tore the hell out of my previously-smooth driveway. Issue is that we're a little hilly and slopey around here, so while driveway is smooth, it ain't flat. Plow edge would dig into asphalt any place that crowning put the edge on the drive before the shoes. Also had issues with corners of the plow edge digging into asphalt in some of the sloped tight turns.
Switched last year to a 1" x 4" x 72" polyurethane edge, affixed in place using a 1/4" x 2" x 72" stainless bar and the original carriage bolt holes:
Kept shoes set near that same 1/4" height, and this worked fine for snow, but just skidded over anything frozen. Was a real problem in one or two of our storms where precip alternated between snow and freezing rain (not uncommon, here).
Tried raising shoes to put the rubber hard on the ground, but the rubber just flexed up in-between each bolt location, to where it was wearing quickly at the bolts and leaving ice/sluch between:
It just never worked well, although maybe I gave up on it too soon. Adding more bolts might have improved it, but I feared the 1" thick too-soft edge would always just slip over anything frozen, and so it wasn't worth punching more holes in my plow to test that theory.
This year I ordered a 3/4" x 4" x 72" strip of UHMW, which I hope will be a happy compromise. I've heard varying opinions on what to do with the shoes and cutting edge height. I do believe that running completely shoe-less might be a good way to break the UHMW edge off if I hit anything less than flat (like the hard seam between my driveway and street), so that's probably not worth trying.
Am I on the right track? How do you folks run your skid shoes with UHMW edges?
Driveway is glassy smooth asphalt topcoated every 3rd year for decades. It's lumpy, it has some cracks, but it slippy smooth. Street (which I also plow across at end of my driveway) is oiled chipped every 3rd year so about as rough and abrasive a surface as you'll ever encounter. Think the asphalt version of coarse sandpaper.