Kei truck snowblower

[pizzaman09]

My twin brother and I happen to have a bit of a nasty driveway, 450 ft but it's up a 40ft hill while simultaneously turning.  We live in the snowbelt off of Lake Erie so we need a serious snow blowing setup.  

 

So the master plan, mount a 54" wide snow blower on the front of a Kei truck.  The two most important parts of the plan are now in motion.  We acquired a snow blower for a zero turn mower of all things.  The plan is to mount two 10hp DC electric motors by V belt to the blower drive and build a big lithium battery pack to run it all.

 

The second important part is halfway home, we are right now driving this great little 1999 Suzuki Carry from just north west of Washington DC back to Erie, PA on only the back roads.  It has a 49hp fuel injected engine, 5 speed manual, low range transfer case and an electronic rear diff lock.

 

[GonzoTheGreat]

Sounds like you got a great platform! That's gonna take a lot of juice for that blower to be electric. Is the battery bank going in the bed, or is there space underneath? Good luck on the rest of the trip! That's a lot of ups and downs for that little motor.

[White_Comanche]

Looking forward to the engineering you guys put into this. That Suzuki truck is gonna be the star of the show!

 

Battery powered snow shooter seems legit as well.

 

Gonna be a great project to see unravel.

[pizzaman09]

19 hours ago, GonzoTheGreat said:

Sounds like you got a great platform! That's gonna take a lot of juice for that blower to be electric. Is the battery bank going in the bed, or is there space underneath? Good luck on the rest of the trip! That's a lot of ups and downs for that little motor.

I assure, there is going to be a lot of battery involved, all placed in the bed.  We also plan to use the batteries for back up home power using a 48 volt inverter.

 

The rest of the trip went well, it was a tremendous number of ups and downs.  Ended up using the truck to transport a different snow blower for a friend the last 90 miles home.  

 

 

16 hours ago, White_Comanche said:

Looking forward to the engineering you guys put into this. That Suzuki truck is gonna be the star of the show!

 

Battery powered snow shooter seems legit as well.

 

Gonna be a great project to see unravel.

Yep, some engineering will be involved.  The current plan is to put a ball hitch on the back then run a frame underneath to connect to that ball hitch for the majority of the load.  There will be a winch bumper up front with a harbor freight winch to lift up and down.   A couple extra bars and a fair bit of electronics.

[DirtyComanche]

Interesting idea.  I suspect you'll struggle to keep the belts alive with the amount of snow you get and the torque of the motors.  All the tractor mount snowblowers are either direct PTO drive using a gearbox, PTO and chain drive, or direct hydraulic drive, and they're much more reliable than anything belt driven and can chew the heavy/wet stuff.

 

Having battery backup for the house would be a big bonus.  I debated getting a cheap Tesla (or maybe a Ioniq) partly for that.  I have a 6kw Kubota light plant but it's not the ideal thing to run all the time, but it would charge a car fairly efficiently if needed.  Otherwise let the car battery run everything.