Homemade Power Wagon

[SWNH]

I can across these pics and figured some of you might find it interesting.

Before I got my tractor or ATV, moving the wood piles was a manual affair (i.e. wheel barrow). Not bad when the ground was dry. But in the mud season here in NH, it was a PITA. I got the idea from a picture in a magazine (can't remember which) many years ago.

The snowblower is a Toro PowerShift 1132. It has a real transmission, not a friction disc. Very stout. I simply removed the front auger housing (6 bolts and one belt...5 minute job). I fabricated a frame and bracket to bolt to the tractor unit using the same 6 bolt holes. Added a couple of 10" diameter pneumatic casters in the front and a wood box. Transformed into a usable powered wood hauler.

Steers like a shopping cart. With only one wheel locked, it handles fine on level ground. With both wheels locked it can handle the slopes (at the expense of titanic steering on the driveway). Nice thing about it is that it can be transformed in just a few minutes back to a snowblower.

 

[LLigetfa]

All you need now is to pull a sulky behind it so you can sit instead of walk. Only problem with snow thrower engines is they have no air filter.

 

[Shari]

Now THAT is a neat idea for moving wood! I like it!

Shari

 

[quads]

That's pretty cool!

 

[mayhem]

All you need now is to pull a sulky behind it so you can sit instead of walk. Only problem with snow thrower engines is they have no air filter.

Older Ariens Sno-Thro's had year round attachments available and factory air cleaner kits to use when not snow blowing. I've been looking for reasonably priced accessories for my 824 for awhile, but they're relatively uncommon...you could get a 26" finish mower, a 30" reel mower, a chipper/shredder, a 36" power brush, a lawn vacuum and remarkably enough they also had a factory sulky option. Wouldn't be much of an effort to make a wheelbarrow cart for the front...this is an excellent idea...think I'll try it out because my wood splitting area is downhill from the house about 75-100 feet and I have to do about 20 vertical feet to get the wood up there. Sucks with a wheelbarrow.

 

[Stlshrk]

Pretty cool stuff there Peter SWNH. You guys talking about all those attachements remind me of the old Gravelys!

 

[WoodPorn]

All you need now is to pull a sulky behind it so you can sit instead of walk. Only problem with snow thrower engines is they have no air filter.

I've never seen a blower motor w/out a filter, where is the air pulled through?

 

[Flatbedford]

Pretty cool stuff there Peter SWNH. You guys talking about all those attachements remind me of the old Gravelys!

That's what I was thinking.

 

[mayhem]

All you need now is to pull a sulky behind it so you can sit instead of walk. Only problem with snow thrower engines is they have no air filter.

I've never seen a blower motor w/out a filter, where is the air pulled through?

I have 2 8hp snowblowers. A simplicity and an older Ariens, neither has an air filter, though the simplicity has a sort of wire mesh thing that you might be inclined to call an air filter. The Ariens has a carbeurator butterfly as the air intake. In both cases the carb is locaated behind a cover of some sort so its not like its out in the main airstream. In the winter all you're likely to get is flying snow and if it sucks a little bit in its not going to really affect it, but in the summer you wind up with alot of dust, dirt and other debris flying around out there.

But in any case, neither one has a traditional paper air filter element.

 

[Gooserider]

All you need now is to pull a sulky behind it so you can sit instead of walk. Only problem with snow thrower engines is they have no air filter.

I've never seen a blower motor w/out a filter, where is the air pulled through?

I've never seen a snow blower motor WITH a filter... The Tec "Snow King" engines used on Ariens, and the equivalent B&S engines on Toros (and lots of other blowers for both brands of engines) did not have air filters, but instead had a "heater box" which covered the carb, and muffler, and was also the main outlet point for the air blown over the motor by the blower fins on the flywheel...

The theory at least was that if you sucked snow into an air filter it would melt, coating the filter media, and freeze, blocking the air flow. But snow environments are usually pretty clean, not a lot of dust and dirt flying around in a snow storm to get sucked into the engine to begin with, and that heater box was effectively a pretty decent "labyrinth" filter that would stop the big stuff...

On top of this, most snow blowers don't rack up all that many hours - figure maybe 5-10 storms a season, at an hour or two of use per...

However many of the engines did have notes on them warning against use in other environments w/o putting an air filter on, and in addition, recommended removing the heater box and some of the associated shrouding if running the engine in temps above about 40°F as otherwise you risked overheating...

Gooserider