Corn Chopper Snowblower

Corn chopper snowblower SNOWBLOWERS Snowblowers 10-6-6 Corn choppers make great snowblowers, says Walt Bentzinger, Jerome, Idaho, who along with his brother LeRoy mounted a 9-ft. wide blower unit on a Deere 5460 self-propelled forage harvester powered by a 225 hp. engine. They use the king-size blower to clear city streets. The Bentzinger brothers run a custom harvest and manure hauling service. Walt says they first put the big blower unit on a 150 hp. Deere 4640 tractor but it didn't have enough horse-power and wouldn't go slow enough. When they clear streets with the blower on the chopper they blow into a truck driven along side the chopper. The blower's so powerful, Bentzinger says they can load a 20-ft. truck in about a minute. Hydrostatic drive makes ground speed infinitely variable. He mounted the blower to the chopper with the help of an adapter kit built by Fair Mfg. Co., Menno, S. Dak. The mounting kit consists of a mounting frame and reverse-drive gear-box. The gearbox is belt-driven off the chopper and an output shaft drives the blower. Ron Fisher, at Fair Mfg. Co., says the advantage of the adapter kit is that it can be easily removed by pulling a few pins to let you mount it back on the tractor 3-pt. "We used to build "left hand" blowers for mounting on choppers that couldn't be used on anything else," he says. Fair Mfg. makes the snowblower to adapt any pto blower to Deere 5000 series choppers. Fisher says the company will work with farmers to adapt the kit to other chopper makes. Kit sells for $3,015. For more information, contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Fair Mfg. Co., Box 306, Menno, S. Dak. 57045 (ph 605 387-2389).

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