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No.. it's not what you think. I do really like my new snowblower attachment, but I don't think my wife would approve of me "making it official".
isgus:
This is about getting my new and recently purchased MTD 190-823 snowblower attachment "married up" to my Cub Cadet i1050 / ZTT50 "zero turn tractor".
According to MTD, this model is *supposed* to be compatible (among others like 19a-126 and 190-032). But like so many marriages, let's just say the first few times didn't work out (more like a dozen times...):duh:
But first, even just getting this attachment from 300 miles away was an adventure. That's covered in another thread.
Here we are just after arriving home:
Here I'm trying to keep my "heated" (by a small propane heater) garage somewhat warm while unloading:
As for lifting it out.. too late at night to bug a neighbor, but I want to get to work on this thing, so I put on my thinking cap.
I think I got the following idea from Maybar's avatar:
Look Ma, I unloaded it all by myself, and didn't die in the process!
Well, I sort of unloaded it. It's not on the ground yet. How to do that by myself.. hmm:
Time to crack open the manual. It covers both the 190-823 and the 190-823-101. Mine is the 190-823:
The attachment came with a separate box with a pulley system that reduces the belt speed between the PTO and the snowblower's pulley:
Problem #1 was that the back of the bracket interfered with the two hydros on the tractor. Here is the before and after for this modification:
The 2nd problem was that the pins on this bracket that go into the tractor frame weren't long enough. Where these pins go through, the frame actually has 2 layers of steel. So, I had to elongate the thru-holes in the pins.
Already frustrated with the amount of modification required, spending a lot of time on my back on the cold concrete shop floor, and having to work upside down, My socket set thought it was a great time to play "concentration" on me. Aw crap..
I love it when that happens.
So, that was pretty much evening 1...
On evening 2, I tackled the other half of this problem (which isn't actually supposed to be a problem), which is mounting the auger assembly (the rest of this thing) to the front of the tractor.
The manual says because of the weight, you need 2 people to get this thing lined up and lifted up onto the "fast attach" tractor mount hardware. 225 lbs is a lot to lift by one's self. But I'm stubborn. So I did it myself anyway. Good thing the garage door was closed because in order to get this lined up right I had to put myself in a pretty "compromising position" with the auger and do a lot of thrusting and grunting. Use your imagination.
The tractor's front grille was interfering and had to go. Of course the 4 bolts are in a crevice (great design) so I can only get at them with a tiny crescent wrench and get 1/6 of a turn at a time for like 30 threads. 180 wrenchings per bolt, times 4 bolts later, I get it removed.
In this photo it looks like it's attached. Heh.. not even close. This was "marriage" one of many yet to come..
Ok, next major problem -- the "fast attach" part of the snowblower has these tabs that interfere with the tractor's front axle yoke:
Sigh.. ok, time to get out the jigsaw:
Here's what it looks like after cutting. I widened the triangular notch by removing material above the notch on both sides:
That helped that clearance problem, but not enough. When I tried to attach the lower stabilizer bars from the auger assembly to the pulley tray I had installed earlier, the stabilizer bars didn't line up. They were short by about 3/4" and had absolutely no slack:
So, back to remove the auger again and do some more cutting. This time I have to actually cut the tractor's frame (gasp!) because it is interfering with part of the snowblower bracket that isn't easy to modify. Not to worry, the frame cut was just a small corner that didn't add to structural strength.
However, I can't remove the snowblower to do the cutting because now I'm seeing that the left side spring pin is hanging up on the exhaust pipe collar:
So, I take the spring pin apart to get it free for now, and cut the frame:
Now, to fix that muffler problem once and for all. I noodled over this one for a bit and then realized I could just reverse it. Worked great:
So, married things back up again and went back and checked the stabilizer bar alignment... closer, but no dice:
Checking back up front at the "fast attach" brackets (and my quotes here around "fast attach" are becoming increasingly sarcastic), I find that now the lower tab is interfering with the front axle yoke. So, grab that jigsaw... Here is the before shot:
And here is after:
Even after this, the stabilizer bars *still* didn't line up. Sigh. Long story short (too late), I had to do more trimming of the frame cuts (but not by much), and with some downward pressure on the auger assembly I got them just close enough to let me put the pins through the bars into the pulley housing:
Now to install the belt from the tractor's PTO to the adapter pulley from this pulley assembly:
... but there's a problem. The belt is totally slack. The kit comes with a tensioner pulley, but the manual says to only use it with a tractor that has a 54" deck. Mine has a 50" deck. Here's the manual page which is wrong in my case. What it needs to say at top is "Tractor Models Equipped with a 50 inch Deck or Greater". Oh well.
So I install the tensioner pulley anyway (which was quite difficult with the pulley assembly now in place under the tractor, but I refused to go through the whole reinstall of that thing).
On to installing the lower belt which runs from the adapter double-pulley back up front to the auger gearbox pulley. Pretty uneventful (the first uneventful step this whole job):
And... drumroll please... it was finally all assembled and attached:
The only issue now was it's too late at night to go out and make noise and run the thing. So I had to wait until morning.
Here's what my driveway looked like to start. I had to trample over the snow with the vehicles for a few days while trying to get this thing installed, so I had a good mix of some loose snow and some packed snow. The loose stuff is about 6" deep. Plus there was a pretty good barrier of dense road crud at the end from the city plows:
Here we go.. fire it up and watch it fly! :
And about 15 minutes later here's the finished product:
Here's hoping for another big snowfall..
This is about getting my new and recently purchased MTD 190-823 snowblower attachment "married up" to my Cub Cadet i1050 / ZTT50 "zero turn tractor".
According to MTD, this model is *supposed* to be compatible (among others like 19a-126 and 190-032). But like so many marriages, let's just say the first few times didn't work out (more like a dozen times...):duh:
But first, even just getting this attachment from 300 miles away was an adventure. That's covered in another thread.
Here we are just after arriving home:

Here I'm trying to keep my "heated" (by a small propane heater) garage somewhat warm while unloading:

As for lifting it out.. too late at night to bug a neighbor, but I want to get to work on this thing, so I put on my thinking cap.
I think I got the following idea from Maybar's avatar:


Look Ma, I unloaded it all by myself, and didn't die in the process!

Well, I sort of unloaded it. It's not on the ground yet. How to do that by myself.. hmm:





Time to crack open the manual. It covers both the 190-823 and the 190-823-101. Mine is the 190-823:

The attachment came with a separate box with a pulley system that reduces the belt speed between the PTO and the snowblower's pulley:


Problem #1 was that the back of the bracket interfered with the two hydros on the tractor. Here is the before and after for this modification:


The 2nd problem was that the pins on this bracket that go into the tractor frame weren't long enough. Where these pins go through, the frame actually has 2 layers of steel. So, I had to elongate the thru-holes in the pins.
Already frustrated with the amount of modification required, spending a lot of time on my back on the cold concrete shop floor, and having to work upside down, My socket set thought it was a great time to play "concentration" on me. Aw crap..

I love it when that happens.
So, that was pretty much evening 1...
On evening 2, I tackled the other half of this problem (which isn't actually supposed to be a problem), which is mounting the auger assembly (the rest of this thing) to the front of the tractor.
The manual says because of the weight, you need 2 people to get this thing lined up and lifted up onto the "fast attach" tractor mount hardware. 225 lbs is a lot to lift by one's self. But I'm stubborn. So I did it myself anyway. Good thing the garage door was closed because in order to get this lined up right I had to put myself in a pretty "compromising position" with the auger and do a lot of thrusting and grunting. Use your imagination.
The tractor's front grille was interfering and had to go. Of course the 4 bolts are in a crevice (great design) so I can only get at them with a tiny crescent wrench and get 1/6 of a turn at a time for like 30 threads. 180 wrenchings per bolt, times 4 bolts later, I get it removed.
In this photo it looks like it's attached. Heh.. not even close. This was "marriage" one of many yet to come..

Ok, next major problem -- the "fast attach" part of the snowblower has these tabs that interfere with the tractor's front axle yoke:


Sigh.. ok, time to get out the jigsaw:

Here's what it looks like after cutting. I widened the triangular notch by removing material above the notch on both sides:

That helped that clearance problem, but not enough. When I tried to attach the lower stabilizer bars from the auger assembly to the pulley tray I had installed earlier, the stabilizer bars didn't line up. They were short by about 3/4" and had absolutely no slack:

So, back to remove the auger again and do some more cutting. This time I have to actually cut the tractor's frame (gasp!) because it is interfering with part of the snowblower bracket that isn't easy to modify. Not to worry, the frame cut was just a small corner that didn't add to structural strength.
However, I can't remove the snowblower to do the cutting because now I'm seeing that the left side spring pin is hanging up on the exhaust pipe collar:

So, I take the spring pin apart to get it free for now, and cut the frame:

Now, to fix that muffler problem once and for all. I noodled over this one for a bit and then realized I could just reverse it. Worked great:

So, married things back up again and went back and checked the stabilizer bar alignment... closer, but no dice:

Checking back up front at the "fast attach" brackets (and my quotes here around "fast attach" are becoming increasingly sarcastic), I find that now the lower tab is interfering with the front axle yoke. So, grab that jigsaw... Here is the before shot:

And here is after:

Even after this, the stabilizer bars *still* didn't line up. Sigh. Long story short (too late), I had to do more trimming of the frame cuts (but not by much), and with some downward pressure on the auger assembly I got them just close enough to let me put the pins through the bars into the pulley housing:

Now to install the belt from the tractor's PTO to the adapter pulley from this pulley assembly:

... but there's a problem. The belt is totally slack. The kit comes with a tensioner pulley, but the manual says to only use it with a tractor that has a 54" deck. Mine has a 50" deck. Here's the manual page which is wrong in my case. What it needs to say at top is "Tractor Models Equipped with a 50 inch Deck or Greater". Oh well.

So I install the tensioner pulley anyway (which was quite difficult with the pulley assembly now in place under the tractor, but I refused to go through the whole reinstall of that thing).
On to installing the lower belt which runs from the adapter double-pulley back up front to the auger gearbox pulley. Pretty uneventful (the first uneventful step this whole job):

And... drumroll please... it was finally all assembled and attached:

The only issue now was it's too late at night to go out and make noise and run the thing. So I had to wait until morning.
Here's what my driveway looked like to start. I had to trample over the snow with the vehicles for a few days while trying to get this thing installed, so I had a good mix of some loose snow and some packed snow. The loose stuff is about 6" deep. Plus there was a pretty good barrier of dense road crud at the end from the city plows:

Here we go.. fire it up and watch it fly! :

And about 15 minutes later here's the finished product:


Here's hoping for another big snowfall..