Hydraulic Snow Blower

[Throbbin Rods]

I found what looks like a decent deal on a snowblower for my Kubota. The only thing I am unsure of is that it is hydraulic rather than PTO. Does anyone here have experience with the hydraulic snow blowers? Thanks much for any input
Bill

 

[ace10]

Is it a 3 point mount or skidsteer mount?

 

[Throbbin Rods]

3 point mount

 

[mcbane]

You need to match hydraulic flow of the machine to the blower. Too much flow and you have damage to the blower, a hose, or a relief valve. Too little flow and the blower will never spin the fan fast enough to throw snow an appreciable distance.

The blower should have a spec sheet saying the gpm it expects. Double check that the fan motor hasn’t been swapped out for a higher or lower displacement motor than is presumed on the spec sheet.


Sent from my iPhone using The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[Throbbin Rods]

McBane,
Thanks very much for enlightening me. The blower has sat outside for 5 years. No info available from the seller. I think I will hold out for a PTO blower.
Thanks again,
Bill

You need to match hydraulic flow of the machine to the blower. Too much flow and you have damage to the blower, a hose, or a relief valve. Too little flow and the blower will never spin the fan fast enough to throw snow an appreciable distance.

The blower should have a spec sheet saying the gpm it expects. Double check that the fan motor hasn’t been swapped out for a higher or lower displacement motor than is presumed on the spec sheet.


Sent from my iPhone using The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[Showkey]

If a hydraulic snow blower if setup and sized right........they can really seriously blow snow. Many true commercial blowers for skid steers are hydraulic and kick ***.

 

[csp]

McBane,
Thanks very much for enlightening me. The blower has sat outside for 5 years. No info available from the seller. I think I will hold out for a PTO blower.
Thanks again,
Bill

Get the model number off of it and look it up on the web. You don't need info from the seller that you can find on your own.

Personally I'd love a hydro blower over PTO. Fewer moving parts and generally more efficient.

 

[ace10]

Most of the hydraulic blowers I've seen are made for mounting out front. Either on the loader or on the frame or a subframe.

What would be the advantage of a rear 3 point mount not powered by the PTO?

 

[sberry]

Most small tractors dont have the pto power to run one.

 

[Tduby]

Most of the hydraulic blowers I've seen are made for mounting out front. Either on the loader or on the frame or a subframe.

What would be the advantage of a rear 3 point mount not powered by the PTO?

I’m got the feeling someone is confused about what it is or someone built something very stupid. If it was a hydraulic pump mounted to the 3 point and a blower for the loader that is a nice set up provided the motor and pump are matched and your tractor has enough power to spin it.

 

[rlitman]

You need to match hydraulic flow of the machine to the blower. Too much flow and you have damage to the blower, a hose, or a relief valve. Too little flow and the blower will never spin the fan fast enough to throw snow an appreciable distance.

The blower should have a spec sheet saying the gpm it expects. Double check that the fan motor hasn’t been swapped out for a higher or lower displacement motor than is presumed on the spec sheet.

Yes, and no.

You certainly want the machine to have a hydraulic pump that's capable of running the blower. Many older machines don't have anywhere near the flow required.

Too much flow shouldn't be an issue, as any good snow blower should have a bypass valve. And that same bypass valve is what makes hydraulic SO much better than PTO. Should your machine eat something, the bypass prevents major damage even better than shear pins. Just reverse it to clear the jam, and move on.

 

[Firebrick43]

Most small tractors dont have the pto power to run one.

What? Nearly any tractor made by the big manufactures after 1965 has enough pto hp to run a pto powered snowblower that appropriately sized to the machine, even the small ones. Hell, 18hp (true rated not the make believe box store models) had enough to run a 48” blower effectively. However not one has the onboard pump size to run the same size hydraulic blower.

Even 50 hp tractors have only 10-12 GPM flow available. Of this 10-12 GPM available from the pump 2-3 GPM is reserved for power steering. This is why they have pto powered hydraulic pumps for high flow implements.

High flow hydraulics on tractor are recently new and only in the large 200+ hp models to handle the big air planters fans.

Unfortunately only JD ever made under 100 hp tractors with good closed center hydraulic systems and they stoped that more than 2 decades ago on all their import tractors. Everything under a 100hp sold in the USA is imported now.

Now skid steers have the option of high flow hydraulic circuits and more of them have this option added every day.

To the OP. Does the blower have the PTO pump with it? If in good shape and price I would still nab it. A huge advantage in addition to rlitman main advantage, is that you can mount the blower anywhere. If you have a ssqa a plate can be bought for under 150$ and it’s easy to fab a couple of tabs to bolt the blower on or if to big for the loader fan a sub frame. A front mount blower is 10 times better than a rear mount as your not turned around all the time.

 

[rustrunner]

How big of a Kubota?

 

[Bretny]

You need to match hydraulic flow of the machine to the blower. Too much flow and you have damage to the blower, a hose, or a relief valve. Too little flow and the blower will never spin the fan fast enough to throw snow an appreciable distance.

The blower should have a spec sheet saying the gpm it expects. Double check that the fan motor hasn’t been swapped out for a higher or lower displacement motor than is presumed on the spec sheet.


Sent from my iPhone using The Garage Journal mobile app

Not so fast....many hydraulic driven attachments simply have a hydraulic motor coupled to the normaly driveshaft driven gear box. I would take a peak under its covers and see about converting it to a shaft first. A shaft will be by far cheaper than converting your tractor to hydraulics big enough.

 

[imjustdave]

Without any details of the Tractor or blower we are all speculating. from 10hp small garden tractor to some 100+hp one. With it being 3 point mounted I assume it's PTO driven and The hydro might be for changing the direction of the shoot for the snow... but if it's a big one then it could be hydro driven.

FYI you can do a PTO driven hydraulic pump as well. so lots of options.

 

[tdkkart]

Check Wranglerstar on Youtube, a couple years ago I think it was YanMar comp'd him a tractor with a **** load of attachments, including a hydraulic driven front mounted blower. The blower was such a hydraulic hog it had to have a 3 point mounted/PTO driven hydraulic pump.
I think he ended up being their "here test this" guinea pig and it wasn't real successful. I know they took the pump unit back once for re-work and I'm not sure they ever really got it working right.

Hydraulics are fine for uppy-down and inny-outy stuff, but they often seem to end up being really inefficient and expensive when you start doing roundy-roundy stuff with it.

 

[moab11]

Hydraulics are fine for uppy-down and inny-outy stuff, but they often seem to end up being really inefficient and expensive when you start doing roundy-roundy stuff with it.

that just made my day! Going to have to remember this!

Depending on the size of the kubota tractor, you can get front mount PTO snowblowers that work incredibly well, and are much more comfortable to run for long periods.

 

[finn]

Check Wranglerstar on Youtube, a couple years ago I think it was YanMar comp'd him a tractor with a **** load of attachments, including a hydraulic driven front mounted blower. The blower was such a hydraulic hog it had to have a 3 point mounted/PTO driven hydraulic pump.
I think he ended up being their "here test this" guinea pig and it wasn't real successful. I know they took the pump unit back once for re-work and I'm not sure they ever really got it working right.

Hydraulics are fine for uppy-down and inny-outy stuff, but they often seem to end up being really inefficient and expensive when you start doing roundy-roundy stuff with it.

Not exactly true. Skid steer mounted blowers are all hydraulic powered. Some are standard flow and some are high flow. Standard is in the low 20 gpm range, and high flow about double or more.

Of course skid steers also have hydraulic systems designed to cool the high flow systems.

There are front mounted hydraulic blowers for tractors available, specifically for tractors without mid ptos. They use a rear pto driven hydraulic power pack and long hoses.

Not very popular, especially now that mid ptos are readily available on CUTs.