Winter Lighting

More winter driven activities.

I use the quad for the quick plowing (with adequate 4-legged ballast):


But the Warn snow plow has these crappy skids:


They are $40/pair and 3/16" thick. You get 3-4 days of plowing the 3/4 mile gravel driveway before this happens:


Most of those were found post-thaw last year.

Rather than blow another $40 bucks for a few days of usage, I've pieced four of them back together.

Lining up the post:


Filling in the back with a bunch of weld material:


This one needed a washer to bridge the gap:


Laying it down thick on the bottom:


They are now at least 3 times thicker than factory, but for added abrasion resistance I did a redneck heat-treat on them. Red hot skid, meet snow:


Kinda little ugly post heat treat:


The first pair seems to be holding up decently well. Once they get thin, I'll swap in the spares and build them back up again.

If I get tired of doing that, North 40 down in Lewiston has some larger cast iron feet for a truck plow I may adapt.

 

yes, it's complicated, but a small windshield can help if windy, u shape like on a motorcycle. It makes less cool. Of course with a good skiing equipment it's ok.

 

Buy some hard facing rod.

 

Next time we meet up, I’ll give you what I have left of my AR400 plate. You can torch some coins to weld to the bottom of them.

 

Good idea, also another source of hard tough material is old removed and discarded cutting edge from a big dozer blade or loader bucket. really hard stuff. That is what we made the splitting axe out of when we built a home made wood splitter. kept having problems with the cold rolled 1/2 plate bending. but the cutting edge from a D8K blade is tougher than all the rest of the splitter.

 

We used to weld on hard facing rod to the moldboards of our plows.

 

I have hard facing rod welded to the underside of my forklift forks. At my shop the forks get dragged on the concrete floor moving pallets and barrels. The leading edge can take on a knife edge look.

 

An older gent here in our neighbor hood said he had a job once welding at night on the jaws of a rock crusher. He said he could put a layer of hard rod on in about 8 hours that they would wear off the next day crushing granite.

 

I used to do that at the one workplace. Talk about a boring job. Clock in, weigh the spool, weld for 8 hrs, weigh the spool again, bill the client for the difference, clock out. Repeat tomorrow.
Made for some long days.

 

That would be awesome!

The only problem with hard rod is me not having an arc welder. Is there a MIG equivalent?

 

It's amazing what a difference good lighting can make. Makes me want to add LED floodlights to all my vehicles. On my tow pig I added LEDs to the rear bumper wired to the reverse light circuit. That lighting makes the backup camera work far better at night. Lady Shadetree asks why the van backup camera works so much better at night than her Colorado camera does.

With all those snow pictures I thought I may warm things up a bit.

 

There is. It’s pricey though, and pure CO2 is the best gas to use with it.

 

time for you to buy a multipurpose welder. My miller was under 4 grand, will do ac/dc TIG, so aluminum, Arc and Mig all in one unit. Its got auto set features that work well and I have ZERO complaints. Works amazing for what I do. I think it was a bargain for how much I like it.
https://store.cyberweld.com/miller-...qq0G3fTQbRgXilW4pAsFDGA50rDe61AhoCqMUQAvD_BwE

 

Yes Sir......That hard rod is all that us old guy's had......You younger repairmen have all the newer equipment & materials to play with .

 

Don’t you have a tig?

 

MIG and Oxy Acetylene.

 

I typoed that and then edited it to fix. MIG no TIG.

 

I was remembering you had aluminum capabilities; I was thinking TIG, but now I remember you have a spool gun.

You’re welcome to my stick welder any time.

I’m looking at hard facing rods, and the last number in the code is 5, which denotes DC+, but the description says DC reverse polarity (DC+) or AC.

My welder is AC only, but you’re welcome to try it.

 

this does in fact work. All my vehicles aux driving lights have either yellow/amber film over them, or an amber lens.

Yellow doesn’t glare over snow like white light does. I’m away from the house now, but come night time plowing all post a picture of what this looks like during a flurry

 

If you’re plowing over dirt/gavel: it can be done, without causing damage.

My driveway is pure gravel, on a mix of slopes.


Done easily with PVC pipe cut a slit down the length. Works great.