First plowing complete. Not sure if success or failure yet.

Had a good trip to Wisonsin.  It was reasonably productive, and while I didn't get to see Lambeau Field (they closed early the day we went up for a holiday party) I still got to visit a cheese factory and get some cheese curds along with a bunch of cheese.  I had them ship the cheese so I didn't get flagged at TSA with it, and only brought home the cheese curds with me on the flight, so I could try cheese curds with everything (the people I was visiting got me three pounds of them).  They are quite tasty on a pizza.


My photos from Wisconsin can be found at:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/DIpa7T21rZt0mCSr2

Today was our first major snowfall of the year.  I got to check to see if all my tractor work was worth the time.  I started off on the slab.  It worked reasonably well.  I do need to fix the arm that holds the angle in place, the plow kept flopping to the left every time it encountered resistance.  I figured that would give me trouble, and now I found out what kind.  Other than that though, it cleared the slab off very swiftly and very well.


The headlights are actually aimed almost perfectly.  Not too high when the blade is up, and not straight down when the blade is down. 


They are bright enough, but there isn't excess.  In pitch black, I will want my headband too.  Perhaps next year should the tractor survive I will upgrade the internal headlights to LED and run those in addition to the plow blade.


The only problem I had up at the slab was that snow tended to collect on the blade.  It isn't curved enough for snow since it is a dozer blade.  The tractor is also too slow (even though I was actually plowing in 3rd gear) to make it roll off to the side, it only pushes.  Since there was only a couple of inches it wasn't a big deal, but I think it will be a big problem if I try to plow significant quantities.  There are waxes and stuff (some even say Pam works) you can put on it to try and help, I might give one a shot.


Part of it was my fault, so I won't judge it based on speed (at least not yet) but for light snowfalls it would not appear to be faster than a snowblower (maybe faster than Greg's itty bitty dying one, but not a decent sized one).  With deeper snow, I am not sure if it will work unless the pam works wonders.  When doing the driveway though, it didn't work nearly as well.  The driveway isn't flat enough even after the repair work I did, the blade was bouncing and digging a bit more than I like, and the tabs were set perfect for the slab, but too low for the driveway.  They aren't a quick change either, so I will have to decide how I want them set.  I can't fairly judge the speed since I had to plow it awkwardly because the blade wouldn't stay at the angle I wanted, but it was promising that 3rd gear seemed to be good, even pushing piles uphill.  I had absolutely no problem with horsepower, and while a locking differential would be nice, I had no problems with traction either.

The short version is that the plow worked great on the slab, poorly on the driveway, but because of the state of the driveway not because of the rig, power and traction were not an issue.  The jury is still out on whether it is faster.