Hydraulic-Powered Snowblower Mounts In Tractor Bucket

Hydraulic-Powered Snowblower Mounts In Tractor Bucket SNOWBLOWERS Snowblowers 31-1-16 Snow removal is easy for Wolfe Lundgren since he built a hydraulic-driven snowblower that mounts in the bucket of his 20 hp diesel yard tractor. The Prince Albert, Sask., man started with a front-mount, belt-driven, 2-stage snowblower he bought for $300. "Where the pto shaft was, I mounted a hydraulic orbit motor on the drive shaft, and then I put on a vein-type hydraulic pump to run off the tractor pto," Lundgren says. "On this particular tractor, I have three pto speeds, the highest of which is 1,200-rpm, and that's the one that runs the pump." Next, he mounted a hydraulic oil tank with brackets onto the 3-pt. hitch using four bolts. It takes only about an hour to remove the tank and pump if he ever wants to use his pto for something else, but Lundgren can still use the 3-pt. hitch. He says the oil flows through a hydraulic valve, allowing him to either shut it off or switch the flow direction if the blower ever plugs up with wet snow. "The blower is mounted with six bolts in the 4-ft. bucket. The width of it just fits," he explains. "There are 1/2-in. fast-coupling lines that run from the control valve to the snowblower, and that allows me to take the snowblower off if I want to use the bucket for something else." With the blower sitting in the bucket, Lundgren can control the working depth, making it possible to lift the blower high enough to remove a bank of snow. The pump originally had 1 1/4-in. inlet flow ports and a 1-in. outlet, but Lundgren "coupled them down to 1-in. and 1/2-in. so it could run freely without pulling the motor down because of too much pressure for the size of the line." "I did this in my spare time over about two months, and got it done just in time for when the snow came," he says. "The hardest part of the project was mounting the pump at the back onto the pto shaft because it needed a universal coupling between the line and the pump." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Wolfe Lundgren, R.R. 1, Site 28, Box 34, Prince Albert, Sask., Canada S6V 5R3 (ph 306 747-2968; fax 306 747-4353).

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