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Tell us about yourself:“I’m retired, and enjoy puttering around in the shop. I live on an acreage with a long driveway and an access road to the back sheds, so snow clearing is essential.”
A front-mounted snowblower on a small tractor was causing problems with rear traction. Even with aggressive ATV tires and close to 300 pounds of counterweight on the rear hitch, a loss of traction was a continual problem until Doug and his sons worked on a solution.
Great project, guys! Thanks for sharing it with us!
See it in action: https://youtu.be/RN9HYO6u5Tk
What is it? My sons and I built a set of tracks for our 2WD front-end loader. In the winter, when we install our front mounted, self-powered, 18 HP snow blower it adds so much weight to the front that we lose rear end traction and are constantly getting stuck. We tried using tires that are more aggressive, tire chains and over 400 lbs of weight to the back end, but the drive wheels still spun and were digging a hole. We simply needed a larger contact patch and more traction. So, we built a set of tracks from scratch.
The rebar has two sharp bends to keep it centered on the tire, and a gentle bend in the mid-section to match the shape of the drive wheels. We used two 9 feet lengths of chain and 40 pieces of hand bent rebar to form each track. The boys did a LOT of welding!
What design/build challenges did you overcome? Getting the length of the chain was tricky. It took two people and a flexible tape measure to get a rough estimate of how much chain we needed to cut for each track. We didn't want the dolly wheels too close to the tractor, nor did we want the entire assembly adding too much length to the tractor as a whole. In the end, we cut an extra foot of chain and trimmed the excess off as we rough fit the tracks before final assembly and paint. It was also important to keep the nut of the joiner link away from the tire sidewalls so it didn’t unwind during use.
We paid special attention to aligning the dolly wheels with the drive wheels, and then cut the axle and spacers accordingly. The ratchet strap connects to the inner hitch bar (at the back of the inner square tubing) and draws back the axle assembly (mounted on larger diameter square tubing) to tension the tracks.
Now we just need to replace the bucket with the front mounted snow blower and we are ready for the Manitoba winter!
If you had to build it again, what would you do differently? Nothing really. It works like a charm. We started trying to use 1/2 in. rebar but found that 3/8 in. rebar welded to the 3/8 in. chain better.
Which Princess Auto location do you visit most? Panet Road in Winnipeg, MB