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Bert wrote:
We find that our present hydraulic setup is not powerful enough for clearing snow.
What exactly is it not doing? Not throwing snow far enough? Bogging down? Is your travel speed too fast for snow conditions? What r/m are you running on the tachometer? Do you know if your PTO pump transmission is an underdrive or overdrive? The pump could be too small.
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Bob,
It's doing both not throwing snow far enough and bogging down. We're travelling at a fairly regular speed for snowblowing not overfilling the auger area. Our tractor has creeper control mechanism and the tractor is running between 1000 and 1500 r/m. I don't have a clue if the PTO pump transmission is an underdrive or overdrive. It just feels like both the PTO gear pump and hydraulic motor are not strong enough to handle the load.
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Larry,
Thanks, I'll get in touch with them.
How much would it cost to add lets say a 20 to 25 gpm pump on the PTO with hydraulic motor that can handle the extra flow and pressure associated with it? I assume that I'll need to change the hoses and oil tank to accommodate the additional oil flow requirements?
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On the cost thing….I always found that to have a good working front mount blower a person would end up with around $10,000 in the whole thing. I have to tell you that there are many horror stories about people throwing more and more money at home grown front mount blowers systems and never did get them to work right. That's why the whole thing has to be well thought out and engineered from the start.
The cost is why few people go for them. Your issue of not throwing far enough means the flow is too low, motor not turning fast enough. Why that is I can't tell from here.
You can try to add a prince pto pump that has higher output but then will the motor take it? If not chances might be slim that you are going to find another Chinese motor that will bolt right up with a higher capacity. Higher flow might mean bigger hoses. These things is where the costs can start to go out of control. Surplus center probably has the best buy on pumps, motors etc.
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Bert, I just looked at the document you posted, and I don't see how the hydraulics you have will ever do the job you need. The motor is rated at 7kw continuous, with perhaps 120% or 8.5 kw peak. That translates to around 13 or so max HP, and in my snow-blowing experience that's never going to do the job on a 66″ blower. I can overload the engine on my 284 with a 48″ rear-mount blower, although if I'm half-reasonable on travel speed the engine has lots to do the job.
You have lots of engine power, but I don't think your hydraulics will ever do the job. I would guess that you would want a minimum of 20 hp, 25 preferable at the blower and that's going to cost significant $$$. Not impossible, for sure, but low pressures mean physically big pumps, motors, & lines. Higher pressures can reduce the physical size, but the cost is usually more and there is much less tolerance for contamination and other factors (like cold-weather operation. In my mercifully short logging engineer phase of my life I tried to get a 5000 psi Poclain BH to work reliably at minus 40… I don't think Poclain sellls in Canada any more).
If it was me, I'd sell the blower and get one better suited to your tractor, and to me that means a rear-mount. But, of course, it's not me. If you really want to stick with the unit you have, then thepump, motor, and lines will all need to be nearly double in capacity. Associated bits like the reservoir and filter etc. will also need to be resized. None of this is easy or cheap. And while I agree that a mechanical drive wold be nice, it will probably boil down to a fit-it-if-you-can design.
I just looked at the most recent Princess Auto catalogue… a PTO mount pump alone will cost $700. By the time you do the rest I would guess that it total cost might be 3X that amount.
Bert, where do you live relative to Ottawa? I'm about 3 hours down the road near Belleville.
HTH,
Mike
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Hi Mike,
I live in the east end of Ottawa, however, I use the tractor at the cottage which is near Gracefield/Maniwaki, in northern Quebec.
We have an access road of about 1.5 miles that we need to plow and a rear mount snowblower would be hard on the neck if we needed to remove an excessive snow fall and they do happen quite frequently up at the cottage.
I also started looking at prices for 20/25 gpm hydraulic pumps and motors and yes the cost to convert will be quite significant. As you indicated the Prince pump would cost $700, an Eaton Char-Lynn disc valve hydraulic motor would cost $850, a PAL 25 gallon hydraulic tank from Princess Auto would cost another $470 and this doesn't include changing all of the hoses and fittings – yap, that is guite an expensive modification to undertake and I don't think it would be a smart move for me if I went that route as Larry and yourself mention in your post.
Therefore, my best option is to determine if a mechanical drive to the PTO would fit, like you said, I'm surely going to need to be creative to make everything fit properly and I have the whole summer to work on it. Larry has provided me with a link to the Lorenz PTO front mount option and I've sent them an email requesting additional information. I also found this video on youtube and this could be another option for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..aEnT0V5ojE
I've got a challenging project to tackle over the summer to make this work and I'm looking forward to it.
Mike, thanks for your input, it was very helpful.
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if you are really handy with welding and possibly a lathe, you can get two sprockets and chain…come down off your pto to a driveshaft from the back of your tractor to the front using a u joint in the back and a double u joint in the front going to your snowblower. just be careful not to raise the snowblower too high while engaged. this could be done relatively inexpensively. also make sure that you put a protective cover around your sprockets and chain in the rear so there are no accidents. good luck 
steve -
Tinbender,
I'm sure that this is going to be an expensive modification, we are surely looking at all ideas to make this modification work for us.
Steve,
I have a friend who's a very good welder and very handy in making modification to any type of equipment. I already spoke to him about what we want to do and we will see what he comes up with.
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We have a business in town, Newhouse Mfg, that barring any copyright issues could whip up something like that in no time at all. http://www.newhouse-mfg.com/
Perhaps you have someone similar near you.
Edit: I e-mailed them after looking at their site, something to do with them being a big fan of Dan Quayle
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I noticed that you are running between 1000 and 1500 rpm. Is that high enough? I normally blow snow at 1800 to get it thrown far enough and to keep the engine rpm from bogging. Also I believe 1800 equates to 540 at the PTO, not applicable in your case with a hydraulic unit but have you tried running with a higher rpm?
Paul
Paul
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Bert
Interesting information on your Townsunny snowblower. I have sold 3 Townsunny blowers.. 2 Hydraulic and 1 PTO.
The PTO machine works great, but you must turn backwards to use it.
The hydraulic machines have the same problem you are talking about..Lack of power.
I installed a 20 GPM pump and a 11.3 Cu In motor. Pump $699 – motor $419..Worked real good for 15 minutes, then oil gets too hot. Must have larger oil tank. After installing 30 gallon tank, worked wonderful for 4 hrs. Was using it in heavy snow when the gearbox broke (Gearbox housing too thin) and fan hit housing and bent real bad.
The long and short of this expensive experiment was DO NOT spend this extra money for hydraulic update…..Change machine over to PTO…you must change the gearbox.
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Ray,
Thank you so very much for your valuable information and recommendation. We will certainly not spend a dime on trying to update the hydraulics on this snowblower.
The mechanical drive to PTO back to front option is another very expensive upgrade and we are still debating if we will go that route or not.
Do you know how much it would cost for a PTO conversion gearbox upgrade and where could I purchase the PTO gearbox for this snowblower model?
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Here are 2 videos of snowblower. 1 standard system and one the modified system
http://s302.photobucket.com/al…..0388-2.mp4” target=”_blank”>http://i302.photobucket.com/al…..0388-2.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”Modified Snowblower” style=”width: 160px;”>
http://s302.photobucket.com/al…..Blower.mp4” target=”_blank”>
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Ray,
In the blue shaded toolbar there is what appears to be a little green tree next to a little vertical green strip of film. Just click on the filmstrip and enter the URL/filename. That's all, then click “insert”.
Well, that didn't work.
Well, that didn't work either. Could be bad url's possibly, don't know.
I noticed that when you follow the link you get the message:
“The specified media does not exist”.
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When viewing the video, you can also just copy and paste the link from that page.
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I can not get the thumbnail to direct to the video- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.