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Snowblower attachment for SW48?

H

harvey

New member
Has anybody modified a SW48 to accept a snowblower attachment?

We received over 5 feet of snow in three days and I ran out of room to push the snowbanks. Had to pay a frontloader to clear the road and dump snow over the top. I figure blowing the snow would be the way to go.

Thanks for any ideas.
 
There is probably no reason it can't be done if you get a hydraulic snow blower and rig up some hydraulic lines. You'd need to make sure you hydraulic pump had enough output to run the snowblower, a snowblower would likely require a lot more oomph (that is a technical term describing flow/pressure output) than the simple hydraulics for lifting and lowering the blade, but even if you had to swap out the hydraulic pump it should not be too tough of a job.

I use a tractor with a front loader AND either a rear blade or, when the snow is deeper, a snow blower and can tell you that when the snow starts coming down hard, or when the drifts start piling up, the snowblower is quicker and better than the combination of the front loader and the rear blade. I've occasionally had problems with snowbanks piling up and the blower simply blows snow out over the banks and eliminates that problem completely.
 
the old bombi type riggs and trackless riggs i used to work on with tripple auger blower heads were all hydro static drive so you could rev the engine and inch the machine forward unless you like replacing clutches with a manual trand i don't see that being a good idea you might look at an aux motor with a hydraulic circut or a direct drive blower so you could idle the carrier engine while inching and still run the blower at full power.
 
I've got a Bobcat with a snow blower attachment.

My Bobcat is a 763 with the factory High Flow hydraulic option. That brings the hydraulic output from 15 Gallons Per Minute to 25 GPM. (They recommend a minimum of 18 GPM for the blower model I have.)

It works extremely well in dry snow, and so-so in heavy wet snow. Where I live we normally get a ton of snow in the winter (though not so much this year). The way the house, driveway, street, etc are configured I'm somewhat limited as to where I can put the snow. With the snow blower, I can move it in stages (If necessary) to put it exactly where I want it. Though it's not an inexpensive setup, it really does work well.
 
I tried rigging a hydraulic-powered snow blower on my garden tractor, but either I didn't have a big enough pump or more likely the orbit motor was too slow. My farm tractor (170 rated pto horsepower) has an 8-foot rear-mounted snowblower on it which is run from the pto. I'm not sure how much engine power a big hydraulic pump would take.
 
In the case of my Bobcat, the 763 has a 46 hp Kubota Diesel engine. The Bobcat has hydrostatic drive, so pretty much the entire output of the engine is devoted to running a hydraulic pump.
 
I was hunting around for a pic I saw of a Bombi or SW* with a hydraulic snowblower up front, but I couldn't find it. The power unit was mounted off the rear end and was probably useful as a counterweight. It looked like a small diesel engine as I recall.

Building or adapting a snowblower to a hydraulic power unit is not rocket science, but you'll need to do your homework. It's also not inexpensive when you add up costs for pumps, motors, tanks, filters, hoses, fittings, et al. You can drive a pto-driven blower with a hydraulic motor pretty easily, but for it to work well you need to sort of match its original HP and rpm requirements. Again, not rocket science, but you'll need to do your homework to match power, rpm of hyd. motor, and rpm of the pump matched to the rpm and hp of the prime mover, and may have to resort to reduction pulleys/sprockets.

Having built the 2-stage blower pictured in the video below from scratch, I learned some things about blowers. Maybe the biggest thing is that the fan does the lion's share of the work. It needs speed *and* power and is the limiting factor in how effectively you can move snow. The auger doesn't require much power, but its speed needs to be such that it can deliver the right amount of snow to the fan and not overwhelm it.

As a point of reference, my blower is driven off of an auxiliary double gear pump attached to the tandem hydrostatic drive pump on the ASV posi-track carrier. The posi-track is powered by an 84 hp turbo diesel engine. I power the fan on the blower from the large section of the double pump, and the auger from the small. At 3000 engine rpm, these pumps deliver ~ 26 and 18 gallons per minute respectively. A rule of thumb is that 1 engine HP delivers 1 gallon per minute at 1500 psi, so this snowblower is nominally using about 44 HP, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on load. The blower width is 84" and has a 20" fan. It powers through anything including slush pretty well, but takes it's time if you're grinding down frozen snowbanks. I would think that a narrower blower made for a carrier like yours could easily be powered by a 25 hp gas engine. The unimog snowblower shown is also about 84" wide, and has two 3 meter fans (no auger). The blower power unit is a 120 hp 6 cyl turbo diesel engine, and delivers power to the blower head by underslung driveshafts (no hydraulics).

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYku0xoAmh4"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYku0xoAmh4[/ame]
 
my thaughts would be a 50 to 60 inch wide head and an aux motor to run the head off a drop box like the unimog i think it would be the most in expensive way to get the preformance you want and the blower heads for the muni tractors like trackless and holders are all shaft drive.
 
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