Prius Powered Snowplow - Just For Fun

Maybe just a length of angle iron on the bottom to keep the wood from wearing out?

 

That plow is genius! One could try used conveyor belt rubber from the following website, I have no affiliation.

USED Conveyor Belt, Belts, Belting | repurposedMATERIALS

 

I have a snow plow blade on my John Deere Gator UTV. The blade has adjustable feet that actually are what ride along the ground. The steel blade edge should not scrape along the ground anyway. That can lead to driveway damage and accelerated wear on the blade edge. I recommend having an easily replaceable _wood_ edge to your _wood_ snow plow and replace it as needed when worn. Call it a day. Don't add a metal edge. You could consider the rubber edge but I'd keep it simple. Don't overthink or over-engineer it.

Paul.

 

But why does it push the snow into the driveway instead of out into the street? Maybe you designed something backwards.

 

Around here, the municipal plows would just pile it back into the driveway anyway.

 

What kind of jerk dumps snow in the public way? That kind of thing is, for good reason, illegal where we live.

 

I've seen a plentiful supply of jerks do this.

A similar things happens during leaf blowing season. Too many folks just rake or blow the problems from their land to the public streets, or to the bike trails, rather than pick them up for composting or the municipal yard waste system (which also goes to compost).

 

The town where I live has a giant vac truck for slurping the leaf piles off the street, something I do not own myself, nor a garage big enough to store one in.

Some things make sense to handle in a centralized way....

 

Was that just to p*ss off the neighbour who was using a shovel :lol: I'd be happy if we got snow here at all, but that's only because we have had a run of 45*C plus days lately, I bet I'm thinking differently come winter ...... It does get cold enough to set s frost over night about 4 times through winter .... just enough to kill all the non frost resistant plants and make the steep driveway onto the road a tad exciting.

I'm impressed with the way you manage to push the snow without the tyres slipping and stopping the drive all together, we have learnt not to try the rapid take off from the workshop driveway to beat a car coming down the hill into Mannum, wheel spin and drive cut off resulting in just rolling out in front of them tends to put the wind up all involved .....

T1 Terry

 

The programming of the traction control does seem to have built in assumptions about the driver giving reasonable inputs. When the driver supplies a steady go-pedal input that is in proportion to the available traction, the programming seems to do a pretty good job making the details work out.

If the driver supplies a go-pedal input that is just unrealistic for the conditions (like rapid take off on a snowy hill), the car seems to try to do as it's told, takes a big dig with resulting big wheel spin, and reacts with a big backoff (and can end up in a kind of nonproductive big-dig/big-backoff loop).

 

Mine does have a lot of kms on the clock, so maybe that part of it's brains are suffering chronic fatigue syndrome :lol: a bit like the dash remembering to come on each time the car is driven ....... but then again, my wife does have a lead foot so ......

T1 Terry