The great snowplow project, part 3

Bring it on.

This is some of the 50-odd pounds of metal pieces I cut off of the old plow. I burned through a lot of acetylene and oxygen. There's probably an ozone-layer hole over our house.

I got a couple of driveway edge markers at HD to use as the plow edge markers. They're fiberglass, with reflective tape and rubber caps. Cheap too. Here's how I attached them. Small length of metal tube welded on, a cotter pin in the bottom, and a wrap of duct tape (not shown) to make them fit nice and snug.

I still needed to make a deflector along the top rail that makes the snow curl forward and downward while plowing. Plows come with a strip of flexible yet durable rubber on them for this. I had my own idea of what to use. You know those big rubber mudflaps that you see lying along the highways that have fallen off of big-rigs? Guess who stops and picks them up, and has a small collection of them in his garage for just such an occasion. Go ahead, guess.

I sacrificed a worthy candidate, using a circular saw to make quick, accurate cuts. This worked surprisingly well. A few bolts, washers, and nuts through pre-drilled holes, and it's done. I am very happy with the result.

My good friend Joe V. donated* this small winch to me. I checked the internet, and quickly found a diagram on how to wire a DC motor reversing circuit. The internet is wonderful. I had this hard-wired into the cab, but a couple of problems arose. For one, it was tough to get the stiff 10-gauge wiring to fit into the dash nicely. The other problem was that I could not see the winch while I was operating it. For these reasons, I pulled the wiring back out and made a remote switch box.

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* Joe V. is one of a few people with whom I am now at the stage where we just give each other stuff if one of us has it and the other needs it. Doesn't really matter how much it's worth. Perhaps most people are always like this, but I have only come to it in the last 5-10 years or so. It's nice. Nobody keeps score, everybody helps each other. It's just real nice. Thanks, Joe V!

I have to hook up the motor leads manually. I have wing nuts on the terminals, and I have them color-coded with pieces of colored tape.

I also have to hook up to the 12v positive and negative leads to the battery. These are male-female-coded so they can't be mixed up. All of this coding is necessary for the switch to consistently work the way I have it labeled.

I have about 10 feet of cabling, all jacketed nicely inside corrugated wire loom, that I string along the hood and into the window of the cab. I made a switch box out of a house electrical box, and used a rocker switch that Joe V. also gave me. The switch is 2-position momentary, with a center off. I put little labels on there, I had previously markered O/I on the switch for Out/In. Same thing.
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It's nice to be able to actuate the winch from right beside it with the remote box. Just more peace of mind, and to me, simpler than hard-wired into the truck.
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So where are we? The plow is done, I have even done a couple of more mods to make it safer, and easier to operate. Like most projects, this took way more time than I thought it would. I definitely got a lot of practice using my acetylene torch, but that was something I needed to do. Now I'm more comfortable and faster with it. I spent probably $500 on the project, if you're scoring at home. Paid a little for the plow, bought some new steel, burned through 2 bottles each of acetylene and oxygen, some paint, some wire terminals, wire, and a surprisingly large amount of new hardware. I did only use 2 cheap paintbrushes for the whole time, one for yellow, and one for black, by doing the aluminum foil wrap trick! As far as labor, I would not be surprised if I had 80 hours in this. Of course even the painting takes time, and that's not exactly skilled labor, but it is time nonetheless. By comparison, a new personal plow costs about $1500, and I really wanted one. There was no way I'd be buying one this year, but now I basically have one (probably more heavy-duty), for much cheaper. I also figure if it keeps me from having a heart attack, then it was a pretty good investment. Thanks for your interest, back to cars soon.