I was going to fix up the tractor, pretty much everything was pretty much shot on it, but, being a Simplicity, I just didn't have the desire to fix it up like one of my sweet Allis's.  So I wound up selling the tractor. I thought "Well, it will be good for the kids and I to rake and bag all the leaves, shouldn't be too big of a job." So I sold the vac as well.

 

Yeah right. We raked every day after school for a few weeks to try and keep up with the leaves. Raked them into huge piles all over the lawn. But, then we got busy and never picked the piles up.

 

Then it snowed, and all our problems were over! Leaves gone!!

 

Unfortunately, this spring the snow melted. And the leaves reappeared. They did not dissolve, nor melt with the snow like I had hoped.  Finally, one night I got good and mad and started shoveling the soaking wet packed down piles out. Its not too often you see a guy out in his yard, stuffing leaves into a garbage can at 11:00 at night, but I got it done.

 

And I told myself "Never again".

 

This summer, picked me up an EVEN BETTER lawnmower!

 

 

 

Hmmmmmm, how can I setup a vac on this machine?

 

Fired up the littlemarvey R&D department again...... here we go......

 

I thought if I could find an old chopper or silage blower I could maybe make something work, but I went to the local junkyard and found something even better!

 

 

 

 

Its a big industrial fan, it had a large electric motor on it and a triple belt setup. Other people see junk, I see potential!

 

Gave $75 for it, which is a steal, considering how it has two newer pillow block bearings on it.

 

Its a type "H" fan, which I cannot find any info on. I called the company, but they sold that division in the late 90's. I called the company that bought it, but they had no records either. I was really just wondering what speed the fan is supposed to run at. Maybe someone on here knows?

 

Anyways, lets start cutting this thing down to size.

 

Deconstruction is a messy process.

 

 

The PTO on the tractor turns the wrong way compared to the fan. Luckily everything is concentric, so I just had to switch the housing around when I put it back together.

 

 

Cut the shaft down to size

 

 

And chopped off all the extra stuff I don't need to lighten this thing up!

 

 

 

Cut a good chunk out of the middle, and welded the end plate back on. A little primer to keep the rust at bay, it may be next year before I get this little project done.

 

 

Mocked it up  on the back of the tractor, looks like it just might work!

 

 

 

The drawbar on this tractor was'nt hooked up in the front, due to the mower brackets. Made myself an extra long pin hitch drawbar.

 

 

 

Set it up and got it mounted on the drawbar, looking pretty good.

 

 

 

Went to Fleet, got a PTO extension, some hubs, some sprockets, and a length of roller chain. I geared it 2:1, so it should be spinning about 1000 rpm.

 

 

Removed the OEM PTO guard so I could add a top brace

 

 

And drilled right through the hub and shaft and coupled it together with a 1/4" roll pin, so I have some sort of "give" just in case something goes horribly wrong. Shouldn't take a lot to shear the roll pin.

 

 

The fan had 12" inlet and outlet ports. I thought about using 10" hose, but I need some 90 degree elbows to make this work, and the easiest way to do that is using stovepipe elbows and collars from Fleet, and they only go up to 8". 

 

So, made some adapters.

 

 

 

 

This conglomeration is a bit much, but if it all works out, I will make a new piece that eliminates the adapter and collar and elbow and reducer and will be a lot more compact.

 

 

 Grabbed some 1/4" OSB and resurrected the leaf vac trailer. Junior was interested in helping with the build, until he found out the ladder was handy for shooting hoops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had to extend the drawbar out a little further yet.

 

 

Finally bit the bullet, and bought 10 feet of 8" leaf vac hose and two bridge clamps. The bridge clamps are neat because they jump over the reinforcing ribs and hold the hose tight. Man is that stuff expensive, but it is smooth inside and still flexible.

 

I have some thoughts about hooking it up to the Woods deck. The mower is really a "rear discharge", albeit the blades do spin counterclockwise. I wonder, if a guy took some rubber belting cut into strips to block off the rear of the deck, and took the left plate off, would it be a "left hand discharge" deck? Then all you'd need is a deck adapter to hook up the hose.

 

Well, I'm out of time. The leaves are piling up fast so hooking it up to the deck will have to wait for next year. We are just going to have to rake into piles and suck them up like that.

 

Here goes nothing...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyXjCoZsmaM" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyXjCoZsmaM

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjjYjN3F_XA" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjjYjN3F_XA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apparently we are not the only one on leaf duty. Had to wait in line at the compost heap.

 

 

 

Note to self: Next year, we need to come up with a walking floor trailer. Unloading is dusty hard work.

 

 

At any rate, preliminary testing of the prototype is complete. A few revisions and improvements and we should be in business. Need to make a guard for the chain and put all the guards on the mower deck first and foremost, then fix that big discharge elbow and get it hooked up to the deck, and then she goes in the paint booth!

 

Thanks for looking! 

 

 

Nice job.  I hope it works good for you.  My friend and I make up things like that from stuff he has laying around.  The last thing was a log splitter.  We had to buy the hyd pump, but had everything else on hand.

I have an Agri-Fab mow n vac,  Not sure on the speed but it is direct drive from a B&S.  It doesn't have an hp on it but we think it's around 8 hp.  Except my fan is about half the size of yours which changes the dynamics.  The fan is also a flywheel, it's a very stout wheel, which made me wonder if the blades on yours are strong enough to hold up to the job.  I used to just run the mower around and chop the leaves up.  It took a while but I didn't have to rake!

Be sure to post pics when you get it done and operational.

Here's an idea for you that I did when I had a smaller vacuum that I used when I did yard work 30 years ago. 

I went to the local heat and air duct shop and asked them to roll me a megaphone tube about 3 feet long, (I should have made it 4'), from juuuust smaller than the ID of the tube to 2 inches smaller on the other end. 

I wanted to slip the tube inside the hose and clamp the hose on it. 

I then installed 2 screen door handles for holding it on the end of the hose and moving it in and around and under bushes and flower beds, etc. 

The smaller end had more suction and it worked like champ. 

Speed is likely low, but you may be able to swap out a bigger drive pulley, at a later date.

As for a walking floor, don't re-invent the wheel, just get a pickup bed unloader, wif a hand crank, and mount it to the trailer. Leaves is light, and it only takes a little time to crank out a whole load.  I think I paid $5 for the last P/U unloader I got at an auction...

I bought a silage blower adapted to 3pt hitch and tractor PTO a few years ago for

$5 at an auction pretty similar to yours but a lot less work involved(LOL)

You know, I thought about building something like that last year for our cotton harvests, a fan and hose to suck up waste cotton on the ground around finished modules.

I don't have a fan like that yet, though, just an extra cleaning fan from an All-Crop 60...don't know if that would work well or not.

As to unloading your leaves....what about something like this? 

http://www.harborfreight.com/12-ton-truck-bed-cargo-unloader-60800.html" rel="nofollow - http://www.harborfreight.com/12-ton-truck-bed-cargo-unloader-60800.html

wow what an idea!

I took the easy way out and got me one of those brand spanking new Agri Fab tow behind vac.  however my pocket book is a little skinnier than yours right now. 

A college friend used to do roofing jobs told me how to do it.  Lay a tarp on the truck bed, pile about 6" of stuff, on it, lay another tarp, then more stuff. Etc, etc, etc.  When you get to the dump, start at the top, and just zip the tarps out...

I'm betting you could definitely get your fan speed up and get a lot more capacity from your system. The increase in air volume will also help pack more leaves in the box. 

 

Pa has a sickle mower for his B. I took the big drive pulley off to do some bush hogging. I can't remember how big that pulley is. I will have to look the next time I'm up there. Maybe I can get some more fan speed that way, I'd really like to see what happens if we run it at 2000 rpm....

 

At any rate, I went and had a custom elbow made for the discharge.  Nice and sturdy, that's for sure. And a lot cleaner and more compact, should work nice.

 

 

 

Unfortunately. mother nature put a cold white damper on my yard cleanup activities.

 

 

This project may be put on hold until spring, unless we get some serious Indian summer...

 

 

I'll second the V-belt suggestion.

First of all, going that level of multiplication will result in the shaft speed on driven end to be very high, so the shock (from chain drive) will be very high at such a short reversal arc... it'll beat the chain, sprocket, and high-speed shaft bearings.  Belt won't do that.

Next... belt pulleys WILL be available in that size...

and if something goes wrong, the belt will slip.

NOW...

With respect to horsepower, the previous note about belts being used in 17hp applications... this is true, but the power transmission capacity of any belt or chain has some serious dependancies.  You can't just say it's a 'xx horsepower' and expect to get that out of it.  There's drivetrain engineering to consider... there's two sides, and the belt or chain in between.  I won't go into thorough detail, but let's look at just a few:

Consider the track on a tank...  it goes across the top of the bogeys, changes direction at the front, then along the bottom, up, and changes direction at the top.  When rolling down the road, the TOP of the track (belt) is travelling forward at TWICE the vehicle's speed, then the opposite direction at the same speed.  At the back end of the vehicle, each segment is forced to go from moving in one direction, to the other direction, in a very short period of time.

Even with no physical load on a chain or belt, the act of changing direction, imposes a very high load on the chain or belt. It's centrifugal force.  If you spin a chain or belt fast enough, it will break, strictly by virtue of centrifugal force.  The LIGHTER the chain or belt is, the lower the tension due to centrifugal force will be.

Next...  NO belt sheave, or sprocket is perfect... nor is the shaft or bearing that it runs on.  This means that the RUNNING outside diameter of a sprocket is not consistent, and when on a fixed-position shaft, varies slightly as it spins.  A chain turning on that sprocket will experience 'tight' and 'loose' spots.  Add that to a sprocket on the opposite side that has a different diameter, and you have TWO things that are moving towards, and away from eachother, in different frequencies... and as a result, your driveline combination will have TWO sequences of tight/loose that change, and cause a third sequence (like neap tide, and high tide)... so you got vibration.  You also have loose spots and tight spots...  the vibration from loose to tight... even without load... can beat hell out of a chain or belt, and cause it to fail on it's own.  While they both experience runout, belts are generally more forgiving than chains... and when they fail, they tend to be a little less dramatic... than a chain.

Driveline power is limited by chain/belt strength, and tractive effort.  chain/belt strength is pretty obvious... tractive effort is a little different, but the idea is same:

Let's say a chain pulling on a tooth... the tooth is only strong enough to withstand 100lbs of pull before it rips off the sprocket.

Let's say BOTH sprockets have 20 teeth... so the chain WRAPS around 50% of BOTH sprockets.  For practical purposes, you can figure that HALF of those teeth-in-wrap are actually in a contact position (it's actually closer to 73.2%, but 50% is easier math with safety factor included)  You can figure that 10 teeth on each sprocket have chain-in-contact.  That's 10x100=1000lbs of tension before the teeth rip off, right?

Let's say the chain is only good for 400lbs of tension.

Your power limit, will be determined by the chain's break tension.

Now let's do a 10tooth sprocket, driven by a 50 tooth sprocket.  Obviously, the large sprocket will have lots of wrap... but due to the angle and distance, the small sprocket will only have 3 teeth in working contact...  your tension limit is 300lbs now.

Oh, and once you get the arrangement spinning... the centrifugal force acting on chain at that turnaround point... comes out to some astronomical figure... like   500lbs...

You'll find the limits really fast.

With belts, all same applies, but it's about CONTACT SURFACE on the sheaves... and don't think you can 'make up' for surface by increasing belt tension-  you can't snug up the belt and expect it to survive long amidst runout of both ends... ;-)

and because of the distance between the two sprockets, and sizes of the sprockets

On another suggestion-  your input and output airflow passages for the blower look a little bit small considering the turbine size and material...  I haven't studied it deeply, but gut feeling tells me that the turbine wheel, when driven to a sensible speed, would be able to move a substantial amount of air, but the inlet and outlet ductwork would not be able to support that flow level.

Gut says that your wheel SHOULD be able to pull dry leaves in through a 40" wide snout that's 2" off the ground as fast as you can drive...  is it doing that?

After watching the videos again... I'm thinkin' that the blower could go about 25% faster, and... that your inlet port and hose is gonna be the biggest weakness...  so here's a possible suggestion:

The inlet port on your blower... replace it, with a hood that has a nozzle going down to the ground.  make the inlet window big enough so that it goes to the edge of the inner 'lip' of your turbine blades... no smaller- the tapered portion should be all open to flow...

And make the hood curve and go down, spread out, but keep it narrow, and use some sort of flexible 'skirt' that can flex, with a nozzle that will hang a few inches above the ground, full width of the tractor.  That devil should easily be able to vacuum the yard, even driving through a big pile...

 

So, I've been doing some Leinie's contemplation. I rummaged through the pulley section at Fleet. Found a 3.5" pulley and a 12" pulley type A or B pulley.

 

That would yield a 3.43 to 1 ratio. So wide open, the fan should be turning 1852 rpm, and should be OK at a little below wide open.

 

I'm a little worried about if the pulleys will fit with my current mounting configuration, so I ran up to where the tractor is stored and measured. Its approximately 9.5" center to center on the shafts.

 

The 3.5" pulley is not meant to go on the 1 3/8" hub. But, a few minutes on the lathe should remedy that.

 

 

 

So, I laid it all out on a piece of cardboard to mock it up. My main concern was the amount of belt contact on the small pulley, being in such close quarters. Need to get a tensioner in there too, if possible.

 

I drew the one on the left at 9.5" center to center, it looks like a little less than 180 degrees of contact.

 

The one on the right I drew up at 13.5" center to center, looks like 180 degrees or maybe a little more, if I just raise the whole vac 4".

 

 

THEN, I googled "how much wrap do you need on a belt" and found a general belt page, and it says 60 degrees or more is acceptable.

 

Well, it seems like it should work with the current 9.5" center to center then. I don't think it will take much power to maintain the fan once it is running, but the load at startup will be significant. Going to have to ease the clutch out to get things turning, that's for sure.

 

Its just a fan, moving air and leaves, not like an auger full of grain, or an elevator full of bales, you know?

 

OK belt and power transmission experts, how is my aim?

 

Loosened everything up, swapped out the chain and sprockets, installed the pulleys so I can measure up for a new belt. Used the old fan belt off the engine and a tape measure to get close.

 

 Need to drill the small pulley for the roll pin and get a 44" belt and see where we come out.

 

Looks like all my existing setup will work, I was wondering if that big pulley would hit my brace or not.

 

 

 

I'm thinking a simple bracket and spring will suffice here for a little tension on the slack side of the belt.

 

 

More to come...

 

I think what I'm going to do is fab some solid mounts that hold the vac securely, rather than having it flop around on that drawbar. And raise it up a little, so I can get a tensioner pulley involved, or make some kind of pivot and adjuster rod or something, to properly tension the belt.

 

I will win, one way or another.

 

TedJ gave me a pin hitch drawbar this winter. Get that mounted up, I think it might be upside down, but if I put it on the other way, it is pointing upward on a pretty good angle. This way its pretty much flat, and it misses the mower bracket.

 

 

So, this thread will be continued this fall.

 

 

 

 

 

Fabricated some solid mounts out of 2" square tubing.

 

 

Bolted them on under the rockshaft mounts

 

 

Tacked some cross bars into place. Remember my failed attempt at making new cylinder bars for my all crop? Yeah, me too. Still using all the 1 1/4" angle iron from that,

 

 

Set the fan down into place. It still leans back a little, so I had to shim it up just a touch to try and get the pulleys aligned as close as possible.

 

Flipped over my upper support brace and it bolted right up.

 

Fabricated a tensioner. I wanted a spring loaded tensioner, as I expect the belt to be moving a bit. I tried straightening out the big drive pulley in a press, and I got it better, but its still going to have runout.

 

 

Put just a bit of preload on the spring. Fired the old girl up, and was not impressed. It didn't seem to be doing any better. Only about 1000rpm! What the hell?

 

Then I tightened up the tensioner. I could hear the fan starting to roar as I tightened it.  More tension=louder fan. Belt must have been slipping.

 

At wide open throttle, got about 1550 rpm.

 

 

More gooder. The airflow from the fan seems to have doubled. I'd still like to see it at 1800 rpm, but this will have to do for now.

 

One other idea I had was to mount the vac on the trailer, build a jackshaft and use two belts to gear it 3:1, and drive it with a pto shaft like any other implement, but that would be a project for the future.

 

Got the new discharge elbow mounted up.

 

 

Now, just need to build a guard around the belt drive, and put something under the seat to hold it up because when I plunk my carcass in the seat, it will hit that top pulley. Maybe I can just built that into the guard.

 

Other than that, need to take it all back apart, do some final welding, and wait for the leaves to fall! I'm sure that will be soon enough.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbZgFXfyUIE" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbZgFXfyUIE

 

Last step, the paint booth (probably next summer)

 

Bitter irony- I've spent the last ten years conniving ways so they can help me with all my tractoring endeavors, be it garden tractors or the bigger ones.

 

The way these two are growing, I'd better get going on figuring out how to do all this stuff myself....

 

Time marches on.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

Good luck, you might be chasing the wild goose!

Brower used to make vacs, I think its called brower-kesmec, now, but it might be a search term you can use.

 

 

 

Also put this under the seat to hold it up while the vac is on

 

 

So today I just tried the mower in some thick leaves. I'd say it discharges out the left side pretty good. It just looks like there is some stuff left over on the left blade, probably due to so much material going through the mower. So, if a fellow had the vac hooked up on that side, it should clean up pretty nice, in one pass. I'd say its worth a little time trying to fabricate an elbow. Its supposed to rain and snow tomorrow, and I'm stuck on call all weekend, may as well spend a little time in the garage.

 

 

Today's harvest. I swept my yard and 3 neighbors yards while the kids were at school. Man it goes a lot faster with them two around! Had two piles about this size

 

 

 

Three trailer loads today.

 

The crew

 

 

If hooking it up to the deck doesn't pan out, I can get the B1 out with the dozer blade on it to push the piles when I am raking it into the hose. We shall see.