Well it was on one of those frigid days that I had to get the drive cleaned out. The temp was at around 0 degrees and the wind was blowing out of the north west a quite a clip. The tractor had been plugged in all night so it would start the next day. Well it started, barely and then the hydraulic steering hose sprung a leak. So that was the end of the snow plowing for me. I called the neighbor in and he cleaned it out for me at $60.00 per hour. Glad it only took him about 20 minutes to do it. The second incident was one morning when the wife tried to get to work. I figured the weatherman was going to be wrong on his prediction of a foot or more of snow. I didn't have the tractor plugged in figuring on a few flakes. "WRONG". We got a foot or better, the wife got stuck. We had to wait a good 45 minutes before I could start the tractor after I had plugged it in. I started wishing I had a truck with a plow by now. But instead being the DYI'er that I am, I came up with the idea of a tracked vehicle powered by a VW air-cooled engine, a gas one. One you don't need to plug in over night. What follows on these pages is a home built unit that will "hopefully" fulfill my idea of a snow removal machine. One with a warm cab.
First I did some surfing to see what kind of tracked vehicles were out there. I figured on something that looked like the "Snowcats" used on ski mountains to groom the trails. In my search I came across all sorts of tracked vehicles, even a home built one. After saturating my brain with all those pictures I started up my cad program and came up with a frame and a sprocket wheel to drive the tracks. The rest is still in my head waiting for the materials to be gathered. This won't be a step by step building procedure but will give the general idea of how I built it. But before I could start I needed a mig welder. That arrived this summer (2005). A Miller 210 220 volt mig welder.
Update: When I started to write this page I was going to use a sprocket wheel to drive the track. That involved the making of a sprocket wheel. That's how the CNC machine I was "going" to build came about. In the year that this idea has had time to ferment I have found a better and easier method for driving the track. In a magazine called "Farm Show" a person had built a tracked vehicle using tractor tires as the tread. The treads ran on ordinary tires. I also did a lot of surfing to find ideas of how to keep the track on the tires. I discover a site in Europe that a guy had dedicated to snow grooming machines. There were many pictures showing drives and how the track is kept on the tires. I even found 3 VW powered vehicles. Two commercially built and the third a modified unit using a VW bus using the tracks off a snow tractor.
The first commercially built one shows a Beetle engine from the back as it would normally be seen when installed in the car. This was the only picture I could find of this unit. The second commercially built unit shows just the engine from three different angles, but gives a good idea of how to connect the engine via a tranny to the tracks. The second picture gives a good view of the sprocket drive. It also shows the disk brakes that are used, I believe, to steer it. The third picture shows the other side of the unit. The long rod going to the underside of the cab must be the gear lever for the tranny. The more I study this picture the more I think the tranny is similar to an automatic transmission. The third unit is the VW bus conversion which I really like. I showed my Dad and asked if I could use his VW bus, but he wouldn't go for it. Darn. Here are three more pics of this unusual piece of transportation, pic one , pic two , pic three . By the way, the bus was a design that never made it to the states as far as body design. Note that it is a four door version of a shortened body.
After all that surfing I started on the frame . That's 2" X 4" X .090" wall thickness tubing. The frame is 2 feet wide by 7 feet long. The gray areas at the end of the tubing is from sand blasting. This helps the welding process. Once I had that all welded up I added the transmission . The tranny plus shift linkage has been temporarily set up. The next photo shows were the CV joints will be utilized to drive the track. At this stage I still hadn't figured out how I was going to drive the track or even how how I was going to build the track. I had many ideas, but all were to complicated in making the track. Purchasing a rubber track was out of the question since they a prohibitively expensive. So the project sat while I was searching for a way to make the track.
I searched on the net for tracked machines. After going to many sites I came across one in Europe that had a list of all the manufacturers and pictures of the units. I came across several body designs. Some of the body designs were quite complicated. Something the garage mechanic would have a hard time replicating. I did find two body styles that appealed to me. One is of the Imp and the other had no name . I preferred the no name one since it had a more squared body style. Much easier to make out of aluminum.
This still didn't solve my method of propelling the unit. There are two ways to propel the vehicles, one is by a hydraulic motor , or a mechanical drive such as a transmission with chain and sprockets. Also what can be seen on the hydraulic unit driven one is the large sprocket that engages the track. This was going to be a big sticking point in my design. I had thought of using a hydraulic drive from a haybine but decided against using hydraulic because of leaks. Who wants to fix a leak when it's freezing out? So I opted for a mechanical drive. I just didn't know how I was going to get the power to or steer the tracks until one day I received my quarterly magazine to Farm Show and my problem was solved. In it a guy had built a tracked vehicle and described how he powered the tracks. Here is the article . It's a bit tough to read but it'll convey the idea. The only problem from the article was that the picture of the way he held the track on the tires wasn't very clear. Well back to the net and a surf over to the tracked vehicle web site I found out how you keep a track on the wheels. Here's how it's done. Although they used what looks like hard rubber tires the principle is the same. I think that is quite an impressive picture. Here's another picture of how it's done. Same idea with the inflatable tires. Note the steel sprocket that drives the track. I had originally thought of using this, but it requires that the bars across the track are spaced correctly. The track is some what of a large chain drive using a sprocket drive such as this. The picture of the home built unit using the Ford Pinto rear ends depends on friction and since I won't be pulling anything very heavy I think it will work.
Now that my drive problem was solved I needed two tractor tires. Well just so happens I have a tractor in need of a new set of rear tires. So in the spring of 2005 when the one rear tire finally went totally flat and lost a majority of it's calcium in the tire I had them changed. Now I had a set of tires I could use for my track. But before I had the tires changed I measured the circumference of the tractor tire so I could get an idea of how long to make the track. Here's how I did it. I used a piece of rope and a clamp . Then I wrapped the rope around the tire and tightened the clamp. This gave me a tool that could be used to to give me the length to the track I would have when the side walls are cut out of the tire. It would also give me the center points of the front and rear axle of my tracked vehicle. Those are two tires from a VW.
Next I needed to figure out how I was going to make a track assembly.
UPDATE: Dec. 03,2007Winter is here again and I haven't worked on this project at all. Other projects have taken priority, such as the trailer, the pallet saw and the drill press. Also I've run out of room in the garage. One VW is all that fit's into a two car garage at the moment. Also not haveing any heat in the garage makes it hard to work on a project like this.
For those of you who have been follwoing this take heart, I will work on it again and finish it.
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