[britm3]

I've seen quite a few of the older threads on winch setups for snowthrower attachments, and most of those seem to be on older machines, with more room to get a bracket on the front of the tractor to hold the winch etc.

I have a 2009 GT5000, with the Craftsman 42" snowblower attachment - no room for a winch on the front. I have contemplated mounting a winch on the rear and guiding the cable back up front to provide lift.

The linear actuator approach seems easier to accomplish, going on this example: Electric Lift

Any thoughts would be appreciated - I like the idea of some float also, which you don't get with the actuator unless you have the right slotted hole setup etc. Looking at this actuator.


On the 48" blade setup, there was plenty of room to get a standard 2000lb winch on the front bracket to lift the blade.

 

[DocG]

You might want to also check out this posting:

http://www.mytractorforum.com/showthread.php?t=72095&page=2

 

[Toolin]

britm3,

I rigged up a winch to lift my snowblower attachment last season. I too had very little room up front (especially when the hood is lifted since it tips forward), so I actually ended up mounting the winch underneath the tractor by bolting it to the blower's separate undercarriage pulley assembly that attaches where the mowing deck usually goes, and used a few pulleys to route the winch cable up front where it rotates the blower's lift arm bracket like the manual lift handle used to do.

I used the ever-ubiquitous camo-painted remote-operated winch that Harbor Freight sells normally for $100 but often goes on sale for $50. I modified the control circuit to remove the wireless remote (which has a dangerous 1 second delay on both start *and* stop) and replace it with a simple SPDT toggle switch which provides instantaneous response.

Yes, using a cable to lift the blower does provide "float" behavior, but that's not always a picnic with a spool type device like a winch. Basically when the blower floats up over something, the cable goes slack, and due to the cable's stiffness it can sort of unwind itself on the winch spool a little bit and start to overlap it's windings, which can lead to some kinking of the cable next time it goes under tension. Because of this, my next modification to this design will be to put a tensioner on the cable to take up the slack produced when the blower floats and keep the windings nice and tight and orderly and non-overlapping.

I have a ton of pictures (and a few videos) but never got around to posting them. But here's a teaser...

 

[nd11]

Try an actuator its works great, you could attach it to a homemade brushguard. this worked for me. Search "snowblower conversion" for more pics of my setup.