Pickup Blade Keeps Driveway "Grader Smooth"

"It lets me use my pickup's snowplow blade as a grader, eliminating the washboard effect that you normally get with pickup-mounted blades," says Richard Hauner, Littlefork, Minn., who mounted an arched steel frame - supported by a 10-in. caster wheel - to support the blade on front of his Ford 1-ton pickup. "I use it to dress up my driveway. It does a great job," says Hauner.

A length of chain runs from the arched frame to the back part of the blade. A turnbuckle is used to adjust the depth of cut. Hauner had been using the 7 1/2-ft. Western blade for years to plow snow off his driveway. But he didn't like the way it graded the driveway. "There was no way to regulate downpressure on the blade, so it would dig too deep into the gravel. A coil spring designed to protect the pickup frame from damage would hold the blade briefly and then release it. As the blade tried to recover, it started bouncing up and down, which resulted in the washboarding effect. My arched frame supports the blade and always keeps it at an even level," says Hauner. "Also, the caster wheel reduces blade resistance and keeps the pickup's front wheels from skidding when I turn."

He made up a press to bend 2-in. angle iron into a half moon and bolted it to a homemade bracket that he welded onto the plow's gear mounting system on front of the pickup. "I've used it for 1 1/2 years and it works great. The turnbuckle is the determining factor on how deep the blade will cut," says Hauner. "The arched frame is mounted 4 to 6 in. above the top of the blade so it isn't in the way whenever I raise the blade for transport. To remove the arched frame and caster wheel all I do is remove three pins - one on the bottom of the turnbuckle and two on the plow's mounting frame."

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