Raising the dead.

[nzzshl]

A pretty impressive restoration, I must admit. I admire the thought that went into trying to save an irreplaceable (or at least painfully rare) piece of equipment. My hat is off to you, Sir! I look forward to the opportunity to do that kind of stuff............in June, I'm hanging my hat up, retiring from a 43 and a half year career. I will be in the lookout for just those sorts of projects to occupy me through the northern Michigan winters.

 

[torch]

with blank pages when the host site a person used changes, pics moved etc etc.

Yup. I've seen that sort of thing happen in the past. That's why I host my pictures myself instead of relying on a third party service like Flickr or Google or Photobucket or Dropbox -- or Orange Tractor Talks -- who may decide to change their business model at any time without input from me.

Hosting pictures consumes bandwidth and storage and therefore costs money. The fact that the owner of this forum has chosen to allow twice as many picture links than forum-hosted images per post suggests a preference on his part. Now, take that one step further and consider what happens if, at some future date, the forum owner -- either the current management or a forum hosting company that buys OTT from the current owner -- decides to trim his bandwidth and storage costs by eliminating image hosting?

In that (hopefully unlikely) event my pictures will still be here.

My motto is "Hope for the best, but plan for the worst". But then, I think the pushme-pullyou double-ended snowblower picture above is ample proof of that!

 

[aerolland]

Agree with both ideas of hosting vs uploading, however, my $0.02 - I like reading the threads that have hosted images because they show up in the flow of the text in LARGE form. When images are uploaded, they appear as attachments that require clicking on and opening in a new window or popup.

...unless I'm uploading and attaching incorrectly... and if so, someone please educate me!

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Agree with both ideas of hosting vs uploading, however, my $0.02 - I like reading the threads that have hosted images because they show up in the flow of the text in LARGE form. When images are uploaded, they appear as attachments that require clicking on and opening in a new window or popup.

...unless I'm uploading and attaching incorrectly... and if so, someone please educate me!

I upload all my pics, and you can use the insert image tab (yellow square) to post the uploaded picture.
upload, go down below your post, see the uploaded files, right click and select copy link address, then click insert image then paste the copied link.
This is kind of a bad picture example as the uploaded picture is a very small picture.

 

[poyjas]

NtRe: Raising the dead.

Torch, some inspirational work you're doing there! I've a B7100 also and an old Kubota snow thrower but thinking of converting from e-clutch/belt to pto. Might you share some fotos of your pto arrangement? Thanks, John.

 

[torch]

I am using the driveshaft set that came with the B2550. There's 3 in the series, the first two are pictured below, looking from under the front axle towards the rear axle. A traditional style slip-joint PTO shaft connects to the forward facing PTO output shaft. It spins a fixed length shaft that is under the port side front axle and carried by two bearings, for and aft.

The third and final shaft is another traditional slip-joint PTO shaft between the middle shaft and the blower. Not shown (because I haven't added it yet) is a snubber chain to limit the FEL arm travel. Without it, the final shaft could potentially be over-extended and pulled apart.

In the above photo, just above the shaft, you can see a piece of thin aluminium angle. It is temporarily supporting the forward end of the middle shaft bearing assembly. That PTO spins at something like 2500 rpm and that little piece of aluminium vibrated like heck even without the final shaft installed and a load applied. It has since been replaced with the 3/8" thick steel plate that was part of the original blower mount. No more vibration issues.

 

[OC455]

Nice works sir. I want to pull my front mount snowblower apart and paint it to last...

 

[torch]

I finally got around to some finishing touches. I ended up replacing all the u-joints in the driveshaft train as well as the bearings supporting the shaft that becomes the "front" PTO. Then I added, the snubber chains I mentioned, to prevent lifting high enough to separate the drive shaft halves:

Then I motorized the chute rotation and deflection. For deflection, I used a 4" linear actuator. It's still a bit on the slow side, but much better than the 8" one I used on the rear blower.

I found the power window crank motor on the rear blower to be too slow too. Plus, there was insufficient room to mount something like that on the front blower because of the FEL arms and bracing. I needed to keep the motor over the blower tub rather than hanging off behind.

So I opted for a chain driven setup, utilizing a MIG welder feed motor. I really like the resulting speed -- about 6 seconds. Not so fast as to be touchy, but quick enough to be responsive.

(I'm not sure if this will work, but let's try embedding a video clip here too)

(nope, it didn't work. If you want video, click here.

It's not really practical, and I would probably be better off with a blade at the rear or a bucket at the front, but I do think this looks cool:

 

[bearbait]

You can be very proud of that, great job.

 

[poyjas]

Torch, really great fotos. It's a great help. I've the snow thrower type that was powered from the front (crankshaft) pto via an electric clutch, now long gone and reasonable cost substitutes nary to be found. Been thinking direct from the mid-mount pto now like yours. Also, I'm intrigued by the use of the loader to mount the blower. I'm converting my B7100 FEL to SSQA and intend something along those lines. Do you find it rigid enough pushing into snow? Thanks so much!

 

[torch]

Do you find it rigid enough pushing into snow? Thanks so much!

I have not yet had the opportunity to try it in deep snow, but it worked fine in the inch or two we had the other day. Other than I need to add some skis to keep it from digging in when it's in the float position.

 

[AndyM]

Wouldn't have thought that unit was repairable - it's great to see it all happen.

 

[tlcfj6082]

Awesome craftsmanship Torch.