Monday
Dec032007
Our first real snow - Part 1
Monday, December 3, 2007 at 7:14AM
This weekend brought our first real snow - about 3 to 4" of the stuff. Which was great - since I had finally come up with a plan to fix the chute rotate arm on the old Ford 715 snow blower. After scouring the web for small u-joints, needed to make the bend in the shaft work regardless of the blower being up or down - I decided that the $35 price tag was a little steep and there had to be a better way to do it.
Enter the $4.45 3/4" socket u-joint and the welder. There was a reason we got that welder - and this is one of them.
The photo shows how nice the final product looks - and I figure that since this was engineered to withstand the torque of a rusted nut and a 3/4" drive socket - the crank shaft for the snow blower should be nothin'.
I have to also say - the convenience of this drive up to the barn, open the door, roll out the welder and weld setup is awesome! Granted the barn is still far from done - and a bit cool on days like this (18 degrees out). Still - there is something to be said about being able to easily fix a thing like this!
And here she is - all set up, welded up, and ready for the long driveway... Now the only question is - will it actually blow snow? Stay tuned - I already have the answer... and the forecast for 12/3 is up to 12".
If you are wondering about the plow truck - every degree under 80 seems to make it about 10% less likely to start... so at 18 degrees, it's about 620% less likely to start than the highly unlikely state it exists in on the best of days... read - scrap metal.
Enter the $4.45 3/4" socket u-joint and the welder. There was a reason we got that welder - and this is one of them.
The photo shows how nice the final product looks - and I figure that since this was engineered to withstand the torque of a rusted nut and a 3/4" drive socket - the crank shaft for the snow blower should be nothin'.
I have to also say - the convenience of this drive up to the barn, open the door, roll out the welder and weld setup is awesome! Granted the barn is still far from done - and a bit cool on days like this (18 degrees out). Still - there is something to be said about being able to easily fix a thing like this!
And here she is - all set up, welded up, and ready for the long driveway... Now the only question is - will it actually blow snow? Stay tuned - I already have the answer... and the forecast for 12/3 is up to 12".If you are wondering about the plow truck - every degree under 80 seems to make it about 10% less likely to start... so at 18 degrees, it's about 620% less likely to start than the highly unlikely state it exists in on the best of days... read - scrap metal.
Reader Comments (1)
I have welder envy!