"Hook a chain and pull the plow out----"
The snout was too long to get by the tailgate stanchion, but I fooled it.....
As I said in another thread, through a dumb mistake that could have been very serious, I ran out of fuel two miles from home yesterday. I nursed it six miles on the two gallons of 'filter rinse and re-fill fuel' that I had in the floorboard, but came up two miles of DEEP mud from home short. This morning about six o'clock I took the pick-up with a can of fuel up to the truck and got it fueled and started. I came back home and read the Lister Forums until I got the ambition to walk back to the snow plow and drive it home.
Then I checked the weather. If this plow aint running REALLY good, I'm stuck for a month or more.
First I filled the forty gallon tank on the plow and all my 'day tanks' while I had the siphon going. Then I started looking at the two biggest trees on the place. Neither is big or strong enough to lift the blade even if I had something to lift it *with*. ...but I *could* use a limb to lift the snout and then drive out from under it. There's a tree behind to anchor to.
It worked! I finally got the old cut-off bolts out of the tailgat brackets and pried it open with a serious bang and hooked a chain to the nose and lifted it with a come-a-long, then hooked a binder in the chain and removed the come-a-long so the fall wouldn't kill it. I locked up the dogs, sprinkled gravel on the ice under the wheels and pulled away. It was a sho nuff wreck of the Richter variety, but it didn't hurt anything.
THEN I went to removing the highway blade and the blizzard hit. I got half of the pins out and the sideways snow drove me inside.
This thing might be plumb fun to drive with the lighter Vee blade on the front and only the three inches of gravel in the rear for weight.
The rearend is steered with a lever in the floor. It's a double-acting hydraulic clylinder on a tie rod, is what it is. It's the handiest thing for turning around and backing out of somewhere....once your hand and eyes get together with the mirror and quit doing things backwards.
Going down the road it's easy to crab it out to the side to get a better angle on the snowbanks. NEAT old truck!! Deafening roar from the old Detroit but it'll sure push a load of snow!
I stuck it twice yesterday-- the first time told me it wasn't going to do what I need done on this road. With the wind out of the west and a road that runs due north I *need* to plow the left lane first and push those deep drifts to the right, then make a second pass in the same direction to push it further east. That makes a snow fence on the down-wind side and keeps the road clear. This blade 'hooks' deep snow and pulls the front end around to the left. On a steep hill with four foot drifts I can only try to push monster drifts upwind AND uphill. It don't work and there's two miles of hill to plow under those circumstances between here and the hard road. I *need* the Vee blade to punch through without getting sideways and diving off something high and scary.
This area usually doesn't get this much wet snow and wind. A drift of frozen snowcone ice is a teeth jarring experience in either plow but it's neat to see the big sheets and blocks of ice peeling out to the side and the shadow of the stack blowing smoke on the road.
Wind gusting to 42mph from the NNW and temperature holding steady at 30.2. Visibility due to snow and blowing snow is less than half a mile. More work to do soon. I don't have THAT many pizzas!