Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

Hello, new to this site. I'm starting on a garage project to convert my tracked atv into a snow blowing machine. I picked up a Bolens single stage 38" snow blower off of Craig's list. It has a horizontal shaft drive coming off of it which turns a gear/chain mechanism on the augers, I assume the Bolens lawn tractor had a front pto this connected to. I think the speed of that pto shaft he thought was 2000 rpms. My plan, weld up a frame, or beef up the one on the blower to mount a horizontal shaft small engine behind the blower and mount that onto the tracked atv. Then a boom of some sort to raise and lower with the winch. I may need to add some weight support wheels, not sure on that, and I may want to wing it out 6-8" on each side to get beyond the tracks. I can get a 13 hp engine from harbor freight, will that be enough? For connecting someone suggested a direct connection through a lovejoy connector, since the drive shaft on the blower is a 3/4" square tube and not a "key" I'll have to fabricate something. Pros-cons with this setup, one I can think of is when the engine is on, this thing is spinning, fast. No clutch or brake to it, but it's simple. Anyone have similar contraptions? How much hp did you find you need? For a single stage blower like that, does the original factory rpms from the bolens the best speed for it to perform the best, or does it work better, throw farther, if it's spinning faster? Or is it optimal for the bearings on the auger/chain, and spinning faster puts those in jeopardy. thanks for your comments

The atv has tracks instead of tires. The blower unit is 38" and I'll add enough wing on each side of the blower unit to get past the tracks, about 7" on each side.

I was told the pto shaft of the bolens tractor was 2000 rpms, no confirmation on that though, that's the speed of the PTO shaft from the tractor that direct connects to the snowblower shaft. if you follow the linkage on the snowblower it goes into a gear box, another shaft makes a 90 degree turn to the edge of the blower and there's a sprocket on the end of that shaft. That drives a heavy chain to a sprocket on the auger shaft. I haven't found a whole lot of information yet on that snowblower attachment or the bolens tractor, and I'm not for certain what bolens tractor it came off of, or the time frame. The snowblower attachment is one tough built heavy duty piece of metal so it has age because they don't make stuff like that anymore. My reasoning for the clutch was more from a safety perspective than performance, so I can stop it by idling down, but if I'm going to put one on I want to put one on that performs well. I hear you on needing the torque behind the rpm's. I'm hoping 13 ponies does it because that's what I've got. I guess I'll start with a middle of the road configuration with gears and clutch engagement and make adjustments if needed. general design is a tube steel frame, the horizontal shaft engine will sit behind the blower. A centrifugal clutch/sprocket on the engine shaft will be pointing toward the blower, chain will drop down to another sprocket and shaft that will connect to the snowblower shaft via lovejoy coupler. The outer frame's weight will be supported by a couple caster wheels and a winch will pivot an inner frame to raise/lower the angle of the blower.

Just thought I'd give an update as I had some time to finally build this. First thing I changed my design, rather than the engine chain dropping down to a shaft and then a lovejoy coupler to connect to the snowblower pto shaft. Instead I just cut out a large enough slat out of the snow blower unit to drop the chain to a 36 tooth gear that I put directly on the snowblower shaft. This allowed me to shorten the unit as a whole and position the 12 tooth clutch directly above the gear on the snowblower shaft. For anyone wondering about the 13 hp engine from harbor freight, seems to have plenty of power but I've only been able to test it on about 6" of fluffy snow, we haven't had a wet heavy snow yet. The auger spins quite fast and the snow was throwing a good 30 feet at 3/4 throttle. This was a fun project and good excuse to get a plasma cutter. I'll continue to make modifications, one thing I know I'll need is the ability to turn the chute from my atv seat.