Simple Gear Plate Rotates Snowblower Chute

Simple Gear Plate Rotates Snowblower Chute SNOWBLOWERS Evan Waa built a snowblower for his Kubota tractor fabricating most of the parts with his shop-built plasma cutter Waa says that initially he used a wrapped cable linkage to turn the spout because the tractor didn’t have auxiliary hydraulics to operate a spout control “The cable system pulled hard to one side especially when the machine was in heavier snow ” Waa says “so I came up with a better idea ” Waa fixed the problem with clever do-it-yourself engineering First he bored out the inside of a flexplate from an automobile engine and cut a slightly larger plate from sheet steel Both plates fit securely over the outside of the chute with four v-rollers sandwiched between them riding in a groove so the chute turns without binding The flexplate and solid lower plate are bolted to the top of the blower’s intake chamber “The outside radius of the flexplate had exposed gear teeth so I centered the plate between three drive pinions that I bolted to the bottom plate ” Waa says “The pinions are from an old starter and matched the flexplate perfectly ” To rotate the chute Waa connected one of the pinions through a gearbox to the shaft of a semi-trailer tarp roller motor The other two are idlers that contain the thrust “The motor has a 60:1 ratio gearbox so when I activate the switch to operate it I can turn the chute 180 degrees in about 12 sec ” Waa says the blower and electric chute control work very well in all types of snow and that he’s gotten a lot of use from it in the winter Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Evan Waa Prosper N D evanwaa@gmail com

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