The New (Old) Snow Plow

This past fall, I bought a snowplow for the John Deere 316 lawnmower off of Craigslist. It was a pretty good deal, so I went and bought it in Colfax, IN. It was cheap because it was intended to be used with a 200 series lawnmower, not a 300 series lawnmower. The attachment bracket is the same, but this snowplow is a manual lift. That doesn't do me any good, because it's missing the arm to manually lift it.

So, when I bought it, I bought it knowing I would be converting it to raise and lower with a hydraulic cylinder. After all, my 316 model has hydraulic remotes in the front for this very purpose. It's just a matter of finding a hydraulic cylinder with a short stroke, and making up some brackets to attach the cylinder to the existing frame of the snowplow.

On the picture above, you can see the remote outlets for they hydraulic couplers. There is also ample room to mount a cylinder. It just so happens I found a John Deere cylinder on Ebay shortly after I bought the snowplow. In it's former life, the hydraulic cylinder was the lift mechanism for the cutting deck, but it is small enough I'll use it for the snowplow lift.

It seems like whenever I have the camera out, the Girl will come running and want to be in the picture. Here she is posing her her pink dinosaur. She named him "Dinus" - pronounced as Linus with a D.

I got to work on a design to get the hydraulic cylinder mounted onto this manual snowplow. It would be pretty simple, in actuality. It was just a matter of taking some detailed measurements, and drawing up some componenents in AutoCad. With a few ideas from pictures on the internet, I had a pretty good idea and plan. This is what I envisioned and would need to fabricate:

Now it was just a matter of making these parts on the mill after working hours at work. With some steel from Andy's scrap pile, I cut out each piece on the mill with carbide end mills. It was a really good learning experience, as I needed a "real" project to do instead of modifiying existing parts. In my design, here were a total of 3 different pieces to make. This first one is to be welded to the frame as the bracket for the rear of the cylinder:

And this second piece will be used to hold the front of the hydraulic cylinder:

This last piece is to be used in conjuction with the two pieces above. The piece below will be welded onto the front of the snowplow. The pieces above will go between this piece and the cylinder, and kind of act as an adjustment should I need in the future. That is, if I designed something incorrectly, I'm not stuck with brackets that are welded permanantly - I'll simply make up a couple of more pieces between this block and the cylinder.

Here is a time lapse video of me cutting a radius on Piece #2 above.

I finally hauled the snowplow bracket into work to use Big Red (the awesome TIG welder). After work hours, I welded on the appropriate pieces, in the appropriate loacations. Here is the front bracket located and ready to weld:

My goal is for a nice, uniform, and smooth weld bead so as to not allow any water to penetrate the seem. By doing so, rust can be controlled, and the part is held on with more strength.

Now, just a little paint to make it all look good, and I'll be finished with the mechanicals. All that is left to do is attach hydraulic hoses and find the appropriate hydraulic couplers, and I'll be in business.