Snowblower on a Ford 640?

RufusMons

Member
I know the Ford 640 is not an ideal tractor for a three-point hitch snowblower. Reverse gear is too fast and there's no two-stage clutch.

Still, I wonder -- how bad is the performance for a 60-inch wide blower on maybe a 4 or 6 inch snowfall? I imagine moving 10 or 12 inches or more will be too much. Can anyone with real-world experience tell me what a 640 can handle?
 
I have an 8N with a 7' Erskine snow blower which is about a 1949 model that you drive through the snow. I have had it since the early 70's and have blown more snow than I can imagine after living in MN and SD. If it is a little to deep to clean in one pass, I leave some and get it on the next pass. Really deep snow requires me to raise the 3 point all the way up and back up as far as I can, lower the 3 point and drive forward on the cleaned area. As with many snow blowers wet heavy snow does not blow well. I have waited until early morning when the temp is lowest and the snow is more frozen. I have pictures but not handy tonight. I may post them tomorrow.
 
That's impressive. I just bought a a 600 series with the Sherman transmission. Planning on a front mount snow blower run by hydraulics.
 
Pictures of mine. Very simple
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with 2 pillow block bearings and 2 ujoints.
 
Do you have a sherman transmission to slow your ground speed & would the pto spin fast enough to throw the snow? I'm glad someone posted about this since here in Mo. we have gotten more snow here in the past 10 years. Even though its not enough to justify a blower, I was curious how these model tractors would handle a blower. This generation of Fords are not geared for this type implement.
 
10 or 15 years ago I saw a gearbox on ebay.
IIRC it bolted to the 4 bolts that hold the pto shaft in place. Inside were two sprockets - one large and one small with a chain between them. Supposedly it increased the output rpms to bring the final pto speed back up to 540 when using a Sherman underdrive.
Someone bought it and I have never seen or heard of another.
It wouldn't be too hard to build one.
If someone wanted to collaborate on such a device I could do the machine work. There would be some power loss of course but It would be interesting to at least do some math as it might open new avenues of things you could do with the older, too fast for tilling and snowblowing Fords.
 
One must wonder the purpose of such device.

The significant advantage of the Sherman is producing 540 PTO RPM at 2,100 engine RPM, rather than, IIRC, 1,800, thus increasing available power and torque at the PTO while maintaining 540 RPM.

Dean
 
(quoted from post at 10:16:58 02/25/22) One must wonder the purpose of such device.

The significant advantage of the Sherman is producing 540 PTO RPM at 2,100 engine RPM, rather than, IIRC, 1,800, thus increasing available power and torque at the PTO while maintaining 540 RPM.

Dean

If you're producing enough engine rpm's to produce 540 rpm PTO speed with a Sherman step-down transmission, then the ground speed is going to be the same as the same gear on the main trans without the Sherman when the engine is running at proper rpm's for 540 rpm PTO speed. So you're not reducing the speed of the tractor any, and you are probably using a lot more gas per hour than the amount of extra hp you might be getting.
 
The sherman under steps down both ground speed and the pto. Low ground speed good.
Low pto speed bad.
If you could maintain the low ground speed but keep pto speed normal you might? be able to run a snowblower.
 

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