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Snow Tracs on the road & fields

Melensdad

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
BigAl said:
So Bob... You planning on harvesting your bean crop with your Snot Trac this year ????? :yum: :yum: . Because I ain't seen no pictures of you running around in the snow :yum: :yum: and using it .:moon:
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Well it snowed a little last night. Just enough to get out this morning. So right after dawn I went for a drive and have been out playing in the snow with the Snow Trac.
 

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Driving down the roads.

Note to self, turn the camera's flash off when taking photos in the cabin :pat:
 

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I went out on a several mile mini-trip that included public and private roads as well as some of the neighboring corn and bean fields. I even started a couple deer who watched from a distance.
 

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I did run into a couple problems. The windshield wipers work, but the blades are simply too short. The heater also would vibrate out of position so I will probably use some locktite on it to keep the heater fan aimed properly.
 

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While I really needed a lot more snow to have a better test run, it did perform flawlessly and ran smoothly. I was happy with the performance on the road and on the fields. Some of the minor modifications and adjustments that were made over the course of the past year proved themselves as worthwhile. I think the track need to be tightened up a little more on the drivers side, but that is easy to do, and I'll just put it up on the lift and take care of that in a few minutes.

Driving on the road was sort of fun, I had not taken it out for a long distance on the roads before, but this was a several mile trip on the roadways. I was able to take 90 degree turns in 3rd and 4th gear without any problems on the road. . . cars, on the other hand, were spinning into the ditches :yum:

With the minimal snow, this was certainly no test. The Snow Trac had been in much deeper snow last year, but today was still a good outing.
 

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Bob,
Looks like your snow cat season has finally arrived also. :applause: It is going to be a real short season for us unless Mother Nature decides to let it snow until the 4th of July.:eek: Nice pics of your home area and your Snotrac.:thumb: :winterrul :letitsnow: :fr2:

:snow_smi: MORE SNOW PLEASE
 
Bill, we are getting more snow now. It started up again about 2 hours ago and is coming down pretty good right now.

I'm planning on going out for a ride in the dark later this evening to test out all the new lighting. I know it works, but what I don't know is how much illumination it will really provide. The PIAA lights mounted on the roof should really help out and provide a lot of light. The stock lights had reflectors that were completely pitted and provided virtually no practical lighting so I upgraded those with an H4 Halogen Conversion Kit. Plus, with the woods around the area it would be nice to have some side lighting to illuminate the area. So now I have all that, it will be nice to see what effect it all provides.

DaveNay said:
OK....who sold you two all the white paint?! :yankchain::respect::whistle:
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Dave, you should have gotten this too. Is it still snowing there? Its coming down here hard enough to get the roads covered again.
 
Looks great Bob, Finally got to play with the sno trac!!! I think their is alot more headed everyones way?? I hear it is going to be one H?LL of a spring!!!
 
Glad your getting out to play a little . Enjoy it . The Snow Trac looks great in the pictures :cool2:
 
Anita, I know its not fair because I have to go to the office today and we got more snow and now I can't play in it!!! To make matters worse, I work late today so I probably won't have time to play this evening.

I do go for a nice little night ride after dark last night. That was fun. I limited myself to the fields and stayed off the roads, but that was largely because the snow plows had cleared the roadways and I didn't see the need to wear down the steel grousers.
 
WE FINALLY GOT A GOOD DOSE OF SNOW :a1:

I have no exciting photos of tonights night ride, but we got a nice front that brought snow in from our west, it mixed with some air off of Lake Michigan and dropped about a half a foot of snow on the area (so far). We had a frozen base of 1 to 3 inches before today but this is not the crunchy midwestern snow, today's snow is nice and light and its still coming down!

I took the family out for a drive, we started out driving along the road to look at the houses, but decided to drop down off the ridge line and run along the river. I missed the turn and almost crashed into some trees on the downslope, fortunately I was able to stop and actually put the Snow Trac to a test in reverse. We were on a steep spot that had the clinometer maxed out, so it was over 33 degrees, but I slipped into reverse and it just backed right up the hillside without any problems :thumb:

I found the clearing (its dark & snowing) and drove down into the fields, then out along the river for a few miles before returning home. Just a very nice ride. Got to love these things!!!

If you look close at the camera phone picture you can see a little bit of the Hawaiian barkcloth interior with pink flamingos and green palm trees!
 

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B_Skurka said:
I took the family out for a drive, we started out driving along the road to look at the houses, but decided to drop down off the ridge line and run along the river. I missed the turn and almost crashed into some trees on the downslope, fortunately I was able to stop and actually put the Snow Trac to a test in reverse. We were on a steep spot that had the clinometer maxed out, so it was over 33 degrees, but I slipped into reverse and it just backed right up the hillside without any problems :thumb:
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Bob ,
Did you ever get those brakes reconnected and working on the Snot Trac???
If not ,I bet there was a lot of screaming and cussing going on about the time you drove off that hill . You should not "girlie scream " like that as it might scare the wife and Melens.who were busy cussing at you ....
 
The brakes were reconnected and seem to do a good enough job to keep me from hitting a tree. :thumb:

As for the girlie scream, it didn't come from me :whistle:

I am constantly amazed at how capable these little machines are. Granted I don't have real mountains, and hills are pretty mild here in Indiana, but some of these ridgelines are pretty steep where the rivers and streams cut through and we've got a modest elevation drop on our property (60' vertical, which is huge in Indiana, but probably just a pimple elsewhere). Still, where I drove off last night would have gotten me stuck if I had been using one of my tractors, and as I was going down at an angle to the slope I probably would have rolled the tractor too. But the Snow Trac just held tight, actually never felt the least bit out of control or the least bit tippy. When backing up the slope it never hesitated or sputtered, it just climbed backwards in the same path it drove down. I don't know what the gearing is in reverse, but given the way it climbed, I'd suspect it is geared very low as it was well suited to the task.

On the return trip my wife was a little nervous to reclimb that slope and I probably should have climbed it in 1st gear but instead took it in 2nd. It did chug a little bit as I slowed down just before the tracks dropped onto the roadway but again had really no problems at all. I've taken steeper taller slopes on the property with the Snow Trac and also taken that particular slope many times, it just happened to be the first night ascent for my wife so she didn't know what to expect.
 
Lucky thing being able to play in the snow, incidentally to take the snowtrac on the road, do you have to have it licensed? Mine is now SORN (statutory off road notification) as I refuse to pay again full car license taxation for a vehicle that didn't go on the road at all last year! I have argued with the taxation authority, but they won't let me license it as anything else but a car!!
 
Anita, I do not have it licensed and in my state it is not possible to license it for the road. When I imported it, it was classified as an agricultural vehicle so I have to follow the laws that pertain to driving a tractor on the roadways. Basically to drive a tractor on the road you need to have a SMV sign on the rear of the unit (be it a tractor, farm trailer, etc) and you have to have the lights on.

No license needed for agricultural tractors!!!
 
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