cub snowblower

[Barnyard]

The rotary brooms were run of the PTO, at least mine is.

Same here, PTO driven on the one I own.

Mine is too.

[Rudi]

From everything I have read and the research I have done on my own project indicates to me that having a PTO driven snowblower/snowthrower is not practical and was not provided by Danco or any other company. All of the Danco snow equipment was powered by either Kohler or B&S auxiliary engines driving a shaft to the front mounted snow blower. I haven't completely decided whether to use belts or a drive shaft .. although I do have it currently set up for belts.

is that snowblower in the video something that was produced by IH or was it something that someone custom built?

The one in the video built by Rejean utilized a 52" ATV mount blower that had the mounting brackets modified to fit his Cub. The one I have is custom built from two 28" blowers utilizing only one impeller and chute.

As far as Danco manuals/brochures/spec sheets, I have been searching for at least 8 years. Those things are as scarce as hen's teeth. But if I find one I can guarantee that I am going to get it .. that's for sure

[Don McCombs]

As far as Danco manuals/brochures/spec sheets, I have been searching for at least 8 years. Those things are as scarce as hen's teeth. But if I find one I can guarantee that I am going to get it .. that's for sure

I'm searching, too, Rudi.

[ad356]

why were they not more popular, you think that they would sell well. these tractors are some of the most popular tractors in history, and i think they were ahead of their time. they are the old school equivalent to the modern sub compact tractor. i just think that a snowblower would be a nice thing to have. maybe it was just too much hassle and they blade is just a whole lot easier to setup. i wonder why later cubs didnt have a live PTO (the type that continues to run even with the clutch depressed). we all know that the numbered series lo-boy had a workaround solution to the problem but they never really fixed the issue with the F-cub.

[bob in CT]

I'll bet that Danco snowblower cost almost as much as the Cub.

[Rudi]

why were they not more popular, you think that they would sell well.

Well for one reason - they basically did not exist as a common place item. They were quite unique even in the mid-60's and as Bob said they were probably very expensive, possibly as much as a Cub was at that time. The only one's who could afford them were housing estates, municipalities or the very well off. It wasn't until '66 that Gilson had one available. I know for a fact that there were none available in 1960 at least up here. Back home in Northern Ontario I have no recollection of small walk behind blowers much before I left for the Navy back in '75. I know that I never saw any when shopping in Canadian Tire or Sears. I seem to have vague memories of an OMC model in 73 or 74 -- mostly because I liked the OMC sno sleds which were quite unique on their own. Not fast but powerful. But snow blowers? not so much.

These are from a previous post in Dads Snowblower thread. No sense retyping so here it is:

I guess I am going to have to break this up into 3 or 4 posts as there is a fair amount of information here. This first pic is from my Father-in-law. This is the snowblower setup he build way back when.. and mounted it on the Putt-Putt. Pic was taken in February 1964.



This one is of the very same blower, but on wooden skids.. you will notice the rooster tail..



This one was taken in either 1959 or 1960.. a few years before the conversion.

Dad has been telling me about this conversion of his for almost 27 years now.. and it is one of the primary motivations behind my Cub SnowBlower project as well. Not being as mechanically adept as Dad (he built the Putt-Putt and it's brother Lil' Red from scratch using old car/truck parts etc.), it takes me a lot longer to figure things out.

It is because of the pics above that I believe that a Cub will be more than enough motive power for a self-powered snowblower mounted on the front, as you can clearly see that the Putt-Putt has a self-powered blower on the front of it as well. And the old Briggs & Stratton was only a 6hp model. I have always believed that Ellie could do the job, no matter what the ground speed is... as long as conditons determine the proper throttle.

Hope you like the pics. I wish the family still had that snowblower.. not sure where it got to...

By the time small self-propelled blowers were commonly available, hence somewhat affordable it was already into the 70's - and as we all know the Cub was nearing the end of it's production run a few years later. I would imagine that Danco built a fair number of these units, but because they were sort of odd-balls I doubt if many survived very long after the municipalities/churches/companies sold their Cub fleets. This is the reason why so few of them exist. Kubota and some of the other smaller compact tractors began production/import into North America in larger numbers around that time. They had live pto's and I guess that was one of the reasons why the Cub ended up discontinued in 79.

There are some follow-on posts in the above thread are very interesting especially if you are somewhat mechanically inclined/like to fabricate.

[Rudi]

Ray just popped over for a cup of coffee after blowing some of the deep stuff down by the pole barn with the Massey. We ended up talking about my last post above and Dad's snowblower. These things did not exist in 1958/59 when Dad decided he had enough shoveling so he decided he was going to build something. He started with what Ray seems to remember a 25 or 30 Imp Gallon steel barrel, bicycle chains, gears etc., (things he had hanging around - if anyone knew Dad they knew he was a pack rat - not much went to the garbage except ..... well ..... garbage ). He designed the auger and impeller and built them in the garage.

As far as we all know down here - this was probably the very 1st man-powered (it was on skids) snow blower at least in the Maritimes and possibly Canada at the time. We do know that a number of traveling sales people used to stop and ask Dad all kinds of questions, take pics and such. Dad never thought much of it. After all he only went to Grade 3 and really believed that most folks were inherently honest. Unfortunately we all know that isn't always the case. Anyways, Dad is pretty proud of what he built way back then. And the family is pretty proud of him. Even if he never gets credited - he still built what is pretty much believed to be the first walk-behind snowblower.

[Jim Becker]

http://www.google.com/patents/US2103510?printsec=drawing&dq=2103510&ei=t8fhUJXVKcSarAG-uICgCA#v=onepage&q=2103510&f=false
http://www.google.com/patents/US2315007?printsec=drawing&dq=2315007&ei=h8nhUMndGYzdqQGoyIDwCQ#v=onepage&q=2315007&f=false

[Eugene]

why were they not more popular, you think that they would sell well.

Cub's = farm tractors. Iowa snow belt farm kid. Really didn't need a snow blower on the farm. Besides that, folks could not afford a non income producing machine that would only get used a few hours a year.

No need to remove all the snow from the farm house and barn lot. Only needed a path to the farm building and to get the car out to the road. If snow wasn't to deep, drive tractor back and forth to pack down snow in the drive way and to make a path to the farm buildings. Deep snow use the loader tractor to push snow off to one side.

[bob in CT]

http://www.google.com/patents/US2103510?printsec=drawing&dq=2103510&ei=t8fhUJXVKcSarAG-uICgCA#v=onepage&q=2103510&f=false
http://www.google.com/patents/US2315007?printsec=drawing&dq=2315007&ei=h8nhUMndGYzdqQGoyIDwCQ#v=onepage&q=2315007&f=false

I was going to say Gravely and the second one shows the attachment on a Model L Gravely. Looks a lot like the old square chute Gravely throwers.

[Jim Becker]

No need to remove all the snow from the farm house and barn lot. Only needed a path to the farm building and to get the car out to the road.

If you had some space to work with, a section of well-placed snow fence did wonders to keep a drive clear of blown snow. You shoveled a few feet next to the door so you didn't track snow in the house and just walked a pathway to the barn to do chores. If there was too much snow to walk through, you couldn't get much done outside anyway. If the street was snowed in, no point clearing the drive. When snow was expected, you parked the car just behind where the snow would be pushed from the street. You had 12 or 15 feet under the car that was clear so you could get a running start, then you just blasted through the snow bank with the car. We would wait until afternoon and only if there was enough snow to look like it would be a problem would we plow it with a tractor. Then we tried to push it far enough to have room for the next snow.

[MilGunsmith]

Around here most farm drives and roads are still either dirt, gravel, or road millings. None of them are condusive to snow blower use.

[Rudi]

The Gilson Snowblower Shop - History of the Snowblower

Snow blower

The First Push Snowblower

Lawn-care company Toro introduced the first domestic push-type snowblower in 1951, followed by Ariens in 1961 and Simplicity in 1962. The early machines were rather small, with an engine of only three to four horsepower.


Read more: The History of Snowblowers | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5364814_histo ... z2GgKs1tlQ

Yup, there is a US Patent Office document that shows someone patented a snowblower back in 1937, but there is a big difference between a patent and an actual production unit. Seems Toro did indeed produce the first ones in 1951 - for the US market. Usually takes a while for this stuff to get to major centres in Canada - never mind the Maritimes.

[beaconlight]

The talk of walking to the barn reminds me of the winter of 1962-63. I was working installing L Carrier and Microwave at Tok Junction Alaska. Every morning and afternoon we would walk to the dinner across the highway for coffee. We had such a hard packed ridge that all the snow around it melted in the spring long before the path did. You brought back memories.

[64/67lo-boy]

Found this while googeling. the oldest snow blower walk behind i could find was a 1961 craftsman with steel wheels

From Popular Science, October 1951, comes an interesting article on creating a small snow thrower