«Previous    Next»
“Pto Reverser” Powers Rear Snowblower
“It lets me operate a front-mount 50-in. snowblower on back of my Deere subcompact diesel 4-WD tractor equipped with a 3-pt. hitch,” says Lynn Olds, Lima, Ohio, who came up with a slick way to reverse the pto shaft on the tractor.
“Directly connecting the snowblower to the tractor’s rear pto shaft would have resulted in the snowblower rotating the wrong way,” says Olds, who credits his brother-in-law for the idea.
The pto reverser uses the tractor’s factory pto shaft to chain-drive a second pto mounted below. The entire reverser unit is attached to a steel mounting plate that’s bolted to the tractor.
Olds welded a bearing collar onto the end of each pto shaft and also mounted a hub and gear onto both shafts. The add-on pto has a slide-on hub welded onto it and is driven by a no. 60 roller chain. The chain runs around a pair of sprockets and an idler sprocket, and causes the add-on pto to rotate counterclockwise.
“I use it on Deere 4100 20 hp., 4-WD tractor. I wasn’t sure I could operate a 50-in. snowblower with such a small tractor, but it works great. I built it without using any special tools, at a total cost of less than $300,” says Olds. “I used it last January for the first time and it blew powdery snow 25 ft. out.
“I wanted to use the snowblower on front of the tractor, but it wasn’t compatible with the Deere and, in any case, the tractor doesn’t have enough ground clearance to hook up the front pto to the snowblower.
“When I tried mounting the snowblower on back of the tractor I found out the snowblower ran backwards. That’s why I had to reverse the pto shaft.
“There isn’t a lot of space on back of a subcompact tractor with a 3-pt. hitch, and I ended up having to remove the tractor’s drawbar to make room.”
The add-on pto is off a Massey Ferguson 35 tractor. “The pto shaft was 28 in. long, so I cut it down to the length needed. The no. 60 roller chain I used is overkill, but I used it because I knew it would hold up.”
Olds also uses his homemade pto reverser to clean soybeans out of a 6-in. grain auger before he puts it away for the season. “It saved me 2 hrs. spent using a pipe wrench to clean out the auger by hand,” he says.     
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Lynn Olds, 4477 N. Cool Rd., Lima, Ohio 45801 (ph 567 204-3539).


  Click here to download page story appeared in.



  Click here to read entire issue




Order the Issue Containing This Story
2021 - Volume #45, Issue #2