Mower Rebuild

[awemawson]

And deadly spiders under the toilet seat !

[Highpower]

(01-05-2018, 02:57 AM)Mayhem Wrote: What is this "snow" stuff that I keep hearing about on here?   

We just have sunshine and a clear blue sky 

[Dr Stan]

I did see some good looking lassies when I visited.

[f350ca]

Haven't been keeping up with updates.

Totally disassembled the unit then sand blasted all of it. After a coat of paint she all went back together with a few bushings rebuilt along the way. The engine was another story. I had it running great or so I thought. Pulled it out sat it on the floor then reinstalled it. Simple enough. That little bugger refused to start. Spent 2 days bleeding lines, filling the cylinders with oil and ATF/Acetone, every trick I could think of. Even pulled the injectors and attached them to the lines to check them, beautiful spray pattern. At the end of the second day thought maybe the block heater would warm it up to get it to fire. Plugged it in for an hour, the engine was hot enough that it was uncomfortable to hold your hand on it. Still no go. Decided to pull the glow plugs and fill the cylinders with ATF/Acetone AGAIN. Next morning plugged in the block heater and put the glow plugs back in. It still was cold but thought I may as well roll it over. The little bugger fired right up and ran like a clock. Guessing the rings were stuck but the ATF/Acetone worked with it warm.





Saddie isn't real impressed, no back seat and it isn't fast enough for her liking.



Started reworking that old blower to fit this.
The collars holding the auger flighting were seized solid so the flighting was cut off then the shaft cut at the gear box. A new longer one made and pipe sleeves made that will carry the flighting and be shear pined to the new shaft.

[Mayhem]

I see you have finally run out of room and now have to live in a caravan - oh well, you cannot have enough toys

[Vinny]

Spring's right around the corner. He'll add on!

[f350ca]

Got the auger built. Now make the housing, thought it would be easier to fit the housing to the auger than the other way around. Was that ever an awkward  thing to handle on the welding bench.

[terrywerm]

Following your project with interest as I built a 58" two stage blower of my own back in the early 90's. I don't have photos right off but will get some soon. I still use it from time to time, but to be honest, it is too big and clumsy for my purposes for the most part. It does come in handy when we get a big storm though and it was great to have when we still lived at our previous place!

I started out with an existing single stage blower that was about 38" wide, but had a 16" auger. I wanted to make the housing taller as well as wider and made it into a two stage unit. I first made the housing taller by cutting it in half horizontally just above the auger center line, then added 10" in between the two. After that was complete, I split it in half vertically right in the middle and widened her out by 20". The next step was to build the 18" fan and housing, then mate it to the main housing. Widening the auger was pretty straight forward as I had access to some 16" repair flights for industrial augers. The PTO on the tractor it was going on was also a 2200 RPM system, so I had to do some reduction using #50 chain and sprockets to get the fan speed down to about 650 RPM. The gearbox for the auger was donated from a smaller unit, but I was able to make it work by mounting it behind the housing and using a cross shaft and another chain to drive the auger from one end, which worked very well. The last thing built was the spout with power rotator (wheel chair gear motor) and hydraulic cylinder on the flipper at the top.

The end result is 3 point mounted on the rear of a Simplicity Pow'r Max rated at 20 HP. My first tests with it were impressive, it throws snow almost too far and I have to be careful about where I aim the spout. The real test came in early spring when the snow was starting to melt. I blew a stretch of old snow drift, along with water and slush from right along the curb line, about a block long. I was blowing more water and slush than snow but I took the entire pass without ever plugging up.

The only equipment I had at the time for building this monster was a drill press, wire feed welder, stick welder, electric drill, sawzall, and the usual hand tools. I was fortunate enough to be able to chat with a design engineer at Loftness, a company that builds snowblowers and other equipment, and learned many tips before I started my design. I am most thankful to that gentleman for his advice on the fan and housing design and the transition to the spout. They were key areas in the performance of the blower.

Anyway, enough about that, I don't want to take away from your project! I'll be looking forward to seeing the end product as this progresses.

[f350ca]

There isn't a safe snowflake in the country.
Gave her a test run this aft. Worked great.

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipNw...FflUYTyzQf

[Vinny]

All I got was a picture of a broken robot and this message:

404. That’s an error.

The requested URL was not found on this server. That’s all we know