With the weather lady threatening us with the "s" word, and the fact that there are renters next door in the cottage I was supposed to tile, I decided it was time to inspect the front brakes on the atv and give it a once over before winter.
It's an older bike (2003 Sportsman 500 HO) pushing a battered and bruised 60" plow which has been abused on a number of occasions plowing the neighbor's hilly driveways across the road.
Now last year we noticed that the whole plow had really loosened up on the bike, resulting in the inability to backdrag at all (this atv was capable of that when we first bought it in 08), and really anytime you backed up, hit a bump or got the blade caught in the snow it would pull itself out of the mount entirely. This even nearly ruined a tire once when it fell off going down a hill and ended up wedging itself under the bike.
We welded the tower that hooks into the permamount that is bolted to the atv frame last year, having to bend it back to the correct angle. It improved things but not nearly to the way it was when new. It still fell off at least twice on each day we plowed (about four last year, so we didn't go back and try to readdress the issue).
Today I looked at the mount, and decided to take the whole thing off the bottom of the atv, to get a better look at it and determine if we had any more stress cracks that needed fixing.
I took it off, then attached it to the blade on the ground to see what could be done about it pulling off. I noticed that even though we got the angle correct, the round stock at the back of the mount was bent, and the tongue of the plow (piece that can be removed) was barely hanging on, leading me to believe we may have bent the tower back too far when we welded it.
Then I got an idea. I grabbed a chunk of steel from my scrap bin, 1-1/4×1/4" or so and wedged it in between the two pieces, tapped it with a bar and it tightened everything up a whole lot better. I reinstalled the permanent mounted piece to the atv and took the whole unit over to my uncle's and had him weld the shim to the plow. No more dropping it off the front when you back up, so far at least.
TLDR: plow was loose, welded a shim to tighten things up, tighter plow, ready for snow.
B.
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Most of my rods are racked on the ceiling of my work room in the garage, including "broom handle" with a bunch of reels on it... Made a bunch of "quick rings" out of an aluminum tube...
