Pulley sizes for a single stage snowblower

[Dave85zxt 0]

Hi Guys,

I recently rebuilt a single stage snowblower for my 856 and found that it isn't throwing very far (4 ft at most). I am pretty sure that I need to speed up the snow blower. What size pulleys are you running on your engine and on the blower?

I have a 3" pulley on the engine PTO and 7" on the blower. That's what came on both.

Thanks,

Dave

[W9JAB 156]

After reading quite a bit on this board I decided to put a smaller pulley on my single stage snow blower to spin it faster & throw the snow better. I dropped the diameter of the blower pulley by two inchs. It worked better than I imagined.

This left me with a six inch pulley, now the drive pulley on the tractor had been worn out for some time, the keyway was opened up so it would not tighten down and had way to much play in it. More than likely from all the plowing it had been thru in the past.

I put the six inch pulley on the drive of the tractor replacing the worn out four inch. Now this will slow the speed of the tractor, This worked out well as I like to cut the grass at low speed especially when mulching leafs, the lower speed works the area longer so the stuff gets ground up better.

This also makes second gear more useable as it's not as fast, also I noticed that when going up or down grades the motor stays at a more even R.P.M. The lower speed increases the torque.

The only modification needed to make this swap was to make some clearance on the belt guard, and add an inch to the belt.

According to my calculations, the motor at 3600 rpm with the stock 6" pulley will spin at 1500 at the auger. With a 4" you get an auger speed of 2250 rpm.

But with the faster speed I did not see any difference in how far the snow was thrown

compared to the lower speed, but did notice a big loss in torque at the higher speed.

So after replacing the drive shaft last night {thank you to Dave's tractors} I went back to the stock pulley, I did all the sidewalks in my cul-de-sac and it worked much better. Also the feed speed is a factor, and in my now lower first gear, It seems to improve the system.

[Dave85zxt 0]

Ok, I am going to try dropping the snowblower pulley 1". I like the drive speed of my tractor and switched to a 6 speed this year so I have plenty of gears to choose from.