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HorseFixer

Dukes Snow Blower Automation

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Coadster32

Great job Duke.. to say the least. Alot of time on your hands I see. :notworthy:

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Doubletrouble

That is one slick set up for clearing the dreaded white stuff!! Great job and great looking tractor.

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pbradley68

No heated seat? :notworthy:

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Gerry w

Heated cup holder?? :notworthy:

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HorseFixer

Thanks Guys! :notworthy:

Well the past couple days have been hard at it again. I now have most all the wiring completed, All the wire connections were soldered and shrink wrapped. I decided to have back up lights on the cab as someone recommended and I installed them. :) I am not sure how the H-3 LED BULBS were going to work out in the overhead cab lights, and if they were going to be bright enough, so I thought oh what the heck might as well have four overheads forward just in case :WRS: You can't have enough light I guess? :banghead: Since i had all those overhead lights installed on top of the cab I needed a way to encase the wires and keep things from drooping and hanging down so I came up with a pretty good solution I thought. I went to Lowe's and picked up some wire mold or track molding as it is called. This worked out excellent as you can see by the pictures this was a pretty neat raceway that cab easily be accessed at any time. I then ran all my power wires from the battery to the control box and from the control box to the overhead lights and to the chute motors through plastic flexible corrugated wire loom to keep the wires from chaffing. All the wire I used was THHN and nothing smaller than GA to each light and 12 GA to each of the motors. 10 Ga was used for power feeds to the control box. On the right hand side of the control box I installed an external Rubber Fuse Holder and routed the wires back into the box and installed a 20 amp fuse which will be reduced to 15 amps once the LED BULBS are installed in all the lighting. I took some amp readings through the external fuse holder which came in pretty handy for doing that and Listed my amp readings in an Excel Spread Sheet and will take these Reading again once the LED bulbs are installed. I have been told that the charging system on these tractors are 15 amps, I would say you most likely would want to keep this amperage around 10 amps to be safe and that is my goal. There will be times when operating both motors I may get to 15 amps but that will be intermittent.

My panels for the snow cab are at my seamstress ladies place getting a refurb anything that is damaged is getting fixed whether it be panels zippers, edging, Velcro, ties, what ever is damaged is getting fixed, with any luck I will have those back Friday. I still have some details and adjustments to make on the tranny, brakes, and a few other adjustments. I need to change the lube in the snowblower drive case. Anyway here are some pictures, and at the end check out the movie and lemme know what you think! :thumbs:

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Check Out This Video >>>CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO!

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Gerry w

Really clean! I love the channel in the cab, what a great idea, looks like factory! The backup lights on the top you will love, spend almost as much time backing up as forward and that's the perfect location for them!

really nice job, professional. :notworthy::thumbs:

now for that cup holder!

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stevebo

Duke,

You have lost your mind !!! And the heated seat concept will soon be installed on this one. Looks awesome !!

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truckin88

duke what about a suface mount led for a map light type of deal, might come in handy. Where is the cup holder for the coco (beer in summer). Love it. I am tearing down mine and refurbing now.

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HorseFixer

:notworthy:

You guys are getting hard to please! :WRS:

Well okay how about this stuff? What ya think? :) I dunno That heated seat cushion draws 7 amps :banghead: Truckin I was gonna

put in a overhead LED Cab Light! :thumbs: Common you dont think The Duke runs some half baked Chop Shop do ya? :banghead: Don't answer that! :banghead:

HeatedMug.jpg

SeatCushion1.jpg

SeatCushion2.jpg

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truckin88

Duke did you modify your cab brackets at all, my cab is a 78 C series, y tractor is a 76 same as yours but 8 speed, yet I can tell I need to modify around the dash area. Thanks, Will

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HorseFixer

Duke did you modify your cab brackets at all, my cab is a 78 C series, y tractor is a 76 same as yours but 8 speed, yet I can tell I need to modify around the dash area. Thanks, Will

Will go back to my Nov 8th post. The only thing I had to make was a round Spacer 2" long (1) for each side that was missing. A 2 1/2"ong 5/16 bolt passes thru that Spacer on the lower hole and tightens the cross bar bracket to the dash tower as shown in pictures down the page. My C-120 is a 1975 Model # 1-0491 The Cab is a 1979 I didnt really have to modify anything. What is your cab Model # it should be in the upper right hand corner as mine is shown here.

SNOWMACHINE126.jpg

Here is what ya get on TORO Master Parts Viewer.

SNOWCAB.jpg

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truckin88

my cab is 87-03cb01

It is a 78 C series cab. The manual off toro's site says for 78 and up c series and looking at it, some of the attach points are not there. It appears on a 78 the rod for the clutch pedal runs behind the body where on my 76 it runs in front of the body panel. My dash is just like yours, this is why I was wondering.

Also where did you get the strobe at?

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plowmaster

ive been following along and have something to add with the lighting. many farmers have been updating their tractor and combine lights with HID external ballast lights. i havent paid a whole lot of attention to their posts because i rarley work at night, and when i do upgrade to HID all the info is in the archives at NAT.

HERES A LINK TO JUST ONE OF MANY HID TOPICS...

http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-vi...lat&setCookie=1

it seems they just pull the bulb and spin in one with an external ballast and they draw less amps from what i gather.

just another option i thought you might want brought to your attention...more light less amps.

top notch work on your blower btw, cant wait to see how nice it runs this winter. oh and on edit i noticed how clear your hyd fluid was, we never drain our tractors unless nessassary, regular filter changes of course, plus hooking and unhooking implements mixes everything anyway. we only fully drain if work is to be done to tranny or pto, or if alot of water somehow got in the reserve. just keep it clean with no water. if let sit in a bucket hytran will seperate from the gunk and you can just pour it off. helps to drain into a screen also.

i guess when your playing with a garden tractor $ is a bit different, most of our tractors take in at least 15 gallons of hytran.

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HorseFixer

Plowmaster Thanks, :thumbs: thats quite an interesting article! But as you mentioned that was for a large tractor and probably has an automotive 60 amp plus alternator. With all the electronic transformers and such I wonder what the price would be? :banghead: I bet those lights aren't cheap those guys selling them know Farmers have deep pockets! :notworthy: Just kidding! :banghead: On draining the hydro oil which I switched from Dino Earl to AMSOIL 10w30 4stroke small engine oil it is 100% synthetic which should help in cold weather. Dino earl freezes solid at negative 60 deg below zero. AMSOIL still pours at that temperature. One of my tests is going to be to leave the tractor outside on a zero degree night start it and see if it moves right away without the warm up I have heard many guys complain about! :) My vehicles start on a zero degree day just like they do on a 70 degree day "NO DIFFERENCE" other than my azz and fingers are cold! :WRS: anyways I will give a non bias report it is what it is! Thanks Again!

Truckin I sent you a PM your 78 cab has inside supports that extend all the way down to the floor boards in 79 they changed that and mounted the internal rails to the outside of the dash columb. look below at the pictures

YOUR 1978 C SERIES SNOW CAB

78SNOWCAB.jpg

MY 79 C SERIES SNOW CAB

79SNOWCAB.jpg

SNOWMACHINE082.jpg

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Curmudgeon

Duke,

Just had to come how this build was coming along. Impressive I'd say!

Can I make a suggestion? You do have an extra pulley on the pto yet, if you hook up a generator to it, even an old starter/generator unit, could add more goodies!! Course, with that added draw, you might want to make a few changes to that Kohler. It's real easy to crank them up about 30%.. even more for the smaller big blocks like you have!

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HorseFixer

Thanks Guys! Hey Dale Whats happenin? I will see how it goes, I may have to put a big block in it! :banghead:

Well today I did some work on the HYDRO STAT the tractor was wanting to surge fwd at times. I took the plate cover off that housed the Speed Control Linkage. When I opened the cover the whole thing was packed full of grass clippings and mung and drool! :notworthy: After cleaning the whole area out with a vacuum, I sprayed somepurple power cleaner in there let it soak and then turned the water hose to it. I then noticed that one of the spring tensioners # 131was missing on the #124 Support Cam Block. This made the whole thing shift screwy and no wonder it didn't work right? :thumbs: So I called my local TORO dealer and she said the Spring tensioner was no longer available I said oh yes it is and she said what do you mean.... I said Time for me to go to work and make one, Which is exactly what I did. I found some old fuse block holder which had the metal the right thickness and I gave it a haircut and trimmed it out to a blank to the right size. I then drilled 3 holes and trimmed out the two mend holes to make a slot and bent the tabs to duplicate the original! :WRS: I then made a trip to my local hardware store and picked up a couple 3/8" 8-32 pan head bolts & lock washers. After installation I Lubed all linkages with AMSOIL HD Metal protector and worked all the lube in. What a difference that all made there was no adjustments necessary! :) I then greased all Zerk's and worked pivot points over. Here are some pics..

SPEEDCONTROLLINKAGE.jpg

TENSIONPLATE2.jpg

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KyBlue

Nice Job Duke, and im sure sucking out all the gunk outta there helped a ton too... thats one less thing youll have to do when you redo it next year...

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Nick

Why stop at just heated seats, go all out and put an Eden Pure heater in that baby. :notworthy:

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HorseFixer

Okay last summer I picked up this decrepit Snow Cab You See Below. It needed alot of TLC. As you have seen, I have done a bunch of clean up and painting on the roof and frame work but the fabric and windows was in pretty poor shape and needed attention. I got some of the panels back from my seamstress Gal tonight and I went to work on the windows.

WHSnowCab005.jpg

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I used Novus plastic polish on all the windows it is a three step process

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This Is Before.

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This Is After.

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You Can See The Vinyl had patches sewn in the corners.

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HorseFixer

Well if you remember I said I was going to Duct heat into the Cab. I had mentioned I felt a good deal of warm air that was available off the head of the crank side of the engine. There would need to be some scoop arrangement fabricated and installed on the cylinder head and piped into the cab compartment. I used some 20 ga stainless steel and mitered a scoop to duct this needed heat into the cab. I will make a tapered fitting to attatch to the high temp 3" silicone tubbing. I will most likely make a damper that will be operated by a cable to shut off this heated air to the cab to regulate the tempeture depending on how much heat is needed. Here are some pictures thus far.

SNOWMACHINE172.jpg

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SNOWMACHINE167-1.jpg

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HorseFixer

I continued Fabricating & working on my Stainless Steel Heat Collector Box Tomarrow I will work on the Heat Shutter control that will shut the heat off in the cab in case it get to warm!

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Duff

Dang it, Duke! I don't know whether to laugh or just shake my head in amazement, but the stuff you're doing to your tractor is the purest definition of "Yankee Ingenuity" (with due respect to our Southern members) that I've ever seen! :WRS:

If this rig doesn't end up being the most highly customized machine on this forum, it'll at least place in the top ten!

Hey, Ian (Sigian)! Are you watching this one? :notworthy:

Duff :thumbs:

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wh500special

One of my tests is going to be to leave the tractor outside on a zero degree night start it and see if it moves right away without the warm up I have heard many guys complain about! :notworthy:

Nice work Duke!

Typically, the warmup and delayed motion of the tractor is on Eaton equipped units. The Sundstrands are capable of rolling immediately at startup, but a warmup is still a good idea since the heavy oil can cause higher pressure in the system than is desirable.

You do realize that by being fully prepared that you've probably scared away the snow, right? You might want to advise Mecklenburg and Fisher that this will be a light winter.

Have fun (looks like you are),

Steve

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KyBlue

So Duke...whens the snow making machine arriving?? Im sure youve gone out and rented one just so you could test your getup...or at least had MJ throw some home made snowballs into the thing...haha

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Gerry w

Duke,

Great sheet metal work, the ducting is looking good! Just a thought, instead of a passive air delivery system what if you placed a booster fan in the collar of the heat collector box? It would work as a shut off as well? You have room on that switch box for another, right? :notworthy:

Can't wait to see this in action!

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