On 3/4/2015 9:10 AM, Keyser Söze wrote:
On 3/4/15 8:59 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 3/4/2015 8:35 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 3/4/2015 8:17 AM, Keyser Söze wrote:
On 3/4/15 8:14 AM, True North wrote:
KC
- show quoted text -
"Ha, haven't shoveled in weeks... Just drive through it 
That's why
God
made 4x4 and snow tires. It's so funny at work listening to everyone
complain about driving in the snow when they won't even spring for
pair
of snow tires"
Pair of snow tires???
Up here they recommend all four.
We're supposed to get 4" to 8" of snow tonight. As long as I can
"blast"
my way out the driveway with my old SUV, I'm happy. If it is more than
8", though, I'll have to call the plow guy.
Do you have part-time 4WD on that Toyota? If so, does it do the job in
the snow?
My truck has regular 6 ply truck tires on it. My wife's Mountaineer (or
whatever it is) has all season tires. Her's is automatic, all wheel
drive. My truck is conventional (selectable) 4 wheel drive with a
limited slip rear differential, so it's really 2 and a half wheel drive.
Neither of us have any problems going through fairly deep snow. Only
problems is ice, especially where the driveway slopes up to the house.
Snow tires offer no advantage on ice.
The reason I plow our driveway is because it is long and oil delivery,
propane delivery and other large trucks would have a difficult if not
impossible job trying to make it from the road to the house or barn.
I also have emergency vehicles in mind. It would be a bitch to have a
fire or medical issue and the responding vehicles couldn't make it to
the house.
If I can expose a good amount of the driveway the high
emissivity of the black asphalt absorbs enough radiation energy from
the sun to warm and either melt or sublimate any ice that forms, even
when ambient temps are well below freezing.
I also learned something this year that I never thought about before.
The JD tractor has the typical big, cleated type rear tires. You would
think that those big cleats
on the tires would provide great traction in snow or mud but they don't.
I've ended up stuck in snow (and once in mud), even in four wheel drive
with the rear differential locked so both rear tires are being driven.
Here's what I learned ...
I keep the tractor in the smaller garage attached to the horse barn.
It's doors are small ... 8'x8' and the only way I can back the tractor
into it was to remove the top section of the "roll bar" that is part of
the tractor. With the upper roll bar section removed it clears the
top of the garage door trim by a half inch.
So, this year with all the snow and ice the pavement right at the edge
of the garage door was built up enough that I lost that half inch
clearance. I actually caught the top of the roll bar that remains on
the edge trim of the door opening. Removing the ice at the entrance was
one option but instead I decided to deflate the tractor's rear tires a
bit. Before doing so I did some Google reading on these kind of tires
and discovered that deflating them would help with traction in the snow
as well. They were inflated to 25 psi. The Google information
recommended only 7-9 psi for best traction.
I deflated them to 10 psi. It now clears the trim board on the garage
by over an inch and more importantly the traction in deep snow is much
improved. Yesterday I was out in the horse paddock clearing snow to
give my wife's horse some room to move around without walking through
belly high snow. I couldn't do it before. I'd just get stuck.
I think using a vehicle for snow removal is more art than science. When
I was growing up in our fav home town, I used to take my dad's 4WD Jeep
and plow, and earn some buck$ doing driveways. But I only remember
"reasonable" snowfalls, not the snowmageddons you've been having.
When I worked for the National Education Assn, I spent a year in New
York State, and lived in a suburb just north of Albany. The day before
Thanksgiving, we got more than 30" of snow. The dump truck with plow the
county sent got stuck. The big wheels tractor with plow they sent to
extricate the dump truck and plow our street got stuck. The next day,
they sent one of those articulated earth movers. It got the two vehicles
unstuck and our street plowed, but in the process hit and knocked over a
utility pole, so we were without electricity for a day. Fortunately, we
had fuel, not electric, heat.
The problem with plowing is that you can only clear so much snow before
you are trying to plow it into an existing snow bank. All the back
roads around here are about half to 2/3rds their normal width and the
towns have to use front end loaders to widen them. Takes time and $$.
After the first storm I cleared an area down by the barn (on a side
gravel driveway) that was big enough for four cars to park in, side
by side and in front or back of each other. Large space.
Right now it is completely filled with snow piles, 8-9 feet high that
I have dumped in it with the tractor. It got to the point where plowing
at an angle to push the snow aside was no longer possible. I got pretty
good at pushing the snow into the space I had made and then going back
with the tractor to pick it up and pile it as high as the front end
loader will reach.
I've also made several similar "cutouts" along the length of the
driveway with the tractor to provide a place to push the snow into.
Our driveway is lined with these piles of snow.
At the end of the driveway ... where it connects to the road ... I have
another technique. The piles of snow are too high, so I can't push the
snow into them. So, I push the snow down the driveway, wait until there
are no cars coming, and push it out on the road just a little.
Then I pull out with the truck, angle the plow and go like a bat out of
hell down the road while slowly clicking the "up" button on the plow
controller. It spreads the snow out lightly on the edge of the road
and with the sand/salt treatment and some traffic, it quickly disappears.