I have been considering a "personal snowplow" for a little while now. These are smaller, lighter-duty plows than commercial units that you would use for a business. These are just for doing your own driveway. But they're still expensive, so buying one is out of the question right now.
After looking at this plow for awhile, I decided to convert it into a personal snowplow. I just don't want a big-honking heavy-ass commercial plow on my truck. It's too big, and too complicated. I began by eliminating all of the parts I would not need. I will not use the hydraulic pump, lines, 3 hydraulic cylinders, the valve and cables, or the auxiliary lights. There was still a lot of heavy steel parts that I thought I could do without, so I spent a couple of days with my acetylene torch cutting and cutting, trying to eliminate weight without making it too weak. I eliminated hundreds of pounds by the time I was done. 
Here is the reworked quick mount parts mounted onto my truck frame. Yeah some parts are a little bent, but believe me I spent tons of time unbending stuff as it is; you can't get it all.I finished the mount assembly with a coat of black enamel I had left over from the trailer right after I took this photo. You can see it's partially painted.
Here is my great grille-guard/cow-catcher/roo-bumper/winch-mount/push-bar. It's primarily the winch mount for raising the plow. This is all new angle-iron. In retrospect, I probably could have used lighter steel for this, but it's sometimes hard to judge at the time. You want to make things sturdy, but not overly heavy. I am so paranoid that the plow will literally fall off the front of the truck on Old Hopewell Road and cause a huge, fire-y crash if everything is not sturdy enough. I think it will be strong enough that I could burst through police road blocks if I need to. I just hope I don't need to.-
Incidentally, the over-the-road trucks in Australia have massive "roo-bumpers", way bigger than this. They travel at very high speeds over the outback highway, and kangaroos on the road are a big problem. Look at the big trucks in the movie Mad Max sometime and you'll see.
Here's a side-view. I was going to tuck it in close to the bumper and have it shorter, but at the last minute I decided to make it way-tall and have it sticking way out front. I think this increases the redneck styling tremendously! Yee-haw! I hope my little Mack bulldog on the hood there can still pee past the front of that.
Here is the plow proper. I cut about 6" off of the top of the blade. I welded one of the old plates across the top. I am reusing the cut-off blade part as the sacrificial blade scraper part now. That is the part you see up on the stand. I'll go over the parts and functions in better detail later. You can see the nicey-nice new painting I did; 2 coats of Rustoleum bright yellow enamel really make it look almost new. All the frame parts are black. I painted all the parts I am reusing, this took a lot of time to do.-
Most of the scrap metal parts are on the floor there on the right. I can tell you that big inverted angle part used to be the plow blade scraper. It is 1/2" thick steel, like 5" wide. That piece alone has to weigh 200 lbs. I would estimate this plow assembly used to weigh 500-750 lbs total, I will have it down to about 250 lbs total.
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Like a lot of projects, this one has taken a long time before it looks like anything is done, and then all of a sudden things come together and it's nearly done. I hope this at least works decently when it's finished. It figures I'd finally get a snowplow now that global warming is taking effect.
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One nice thing is that I've had a lot of time to think while I have been working on this. One of the things I have been thinking about is the aborted EV project. I have what I think is an exciting idea for that, so please stay tuned for that news.
1 comment:
Pray for snow.
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