Homeade Snow Plow

[Jetboy]

Homemade Snow Plow

Put the plow I built for my 3rd gen on my 5th. Modified a bracket out of a Curt front receiver. Kinda tricky to brace and keep room for the bolts to go in. Fits nicely around my hidden winch. Could have modified that bracket, but this way I'll take the plow bracket off for summer. Main winch does up/down. Mini winch is double spooled to angle. I have a new 12v power pack sitting in my garage that I might set up for hydro movement at some point, but this works and was only maybe $300 hundred dollars total cost.

 

[nmertz1]

Nicely done!

 

[jmf_tracy]

pretty freakin sweet.
nice.

 

[Antman]

Trying to damage your frame, eh?

These trucks/frames are not designed to plow so it's only a matter of time.

Good luck with that.

 

[chmura]

Trying to damage your frame, eh?

These trucks/frames are not designed to plow so it's only a matter of time.

Good luck with that.

He said he used it on his 3rd gen. If his 3rd is okay than im sure the 5th gen will be fine.

 

[Jeremy556]

I assume he is doing light duty plowing, not smashing curbs and parking stops. Very cool.

...and perhaps his first post not mentioning the 39" tires on his FJ40 :whip:

 

[Jetboy]

Trying to damage your frame, eh?

These trucks/frames are not designed to plow so it's only a matter of time.

Good luck with that.

Care to elaborate? How do you think it will fail?

(This isn't my first rodeo.)

 

[Jetboy]

I assume he is doing light duty plowing, not smashing curbs and parking stops. Very cool.

...and perhaps his first post not mentioning the 39" tires on his FJ40 :whip:

Note. Different one. The 3 speed is better on the 67 fj40 for plowing with the 1st reverse position being directly forward and back. It's more like driving a shuttle transmission. If you're doing it commercially the fj40 is almost perfect once you add power steering.

And if you're wondering you will break the aframe of a commercial plow before you damage the vehicle frame. 2.5x1/4 mild steel angle isn't nearly as strong as a vehicle frame. Where it fails is right at the pivot pin area. And if you happen to be in an old one with just a lap belt - you'll probably bust your face on the steering wheel at the same time.

 

[BlackWorksInc]

I would [MENTION=65614]Antman[/MENTION] is insinuating that the piling snow & increasing resistance would start to potentially crush the crumple zone in the front of the frame that you have mounted the snow plow to.

 

[flyinhawaiian01]

Yep, that crumple zone is quite weak by design. It won't take much to start bending it.

Hope you've turned off all airbag sensors too! It won't take much to set it off, as that plow is attached directly to the frame where the front sensors are also feeding off of.

 

[Jetboy]

FWIW - it takes a LOT to set off airbags. IIRC something like 30mph impact. I'm not aware of any trucks that turn off the airbags for commercial plow duty and they almost never go off. The only ones I know of were some early ford airbags that used a single ball bearing/magnet sensor and even then I've only heard of one going off under plowing conditions.

I don't know what it takes to get a 4runner air bag to deploy, but it's a lot.

Same for the crumple zones. The crumple zones are pressed in corners of the frame rail about 1/2 inch on each corner. They don't remove much structure. Just enough that in a very severe impact they would deform at a specific location. The weaker part of the crush zone is built into the front sub-bumper assembly. I removed that when I put in the winch. The frame rail from the flange back is pretty strong. I don't have the right software to model the force it would take to crush one, but my guess is that it's on the order of a 20-30mph impact with a static object. This mount attaches both to the frame rail ends and down where the tow loops are welded on at the front of the IFS bracket. If you consider how hard you can impact the front suspension without causing frame failure, I think it's a pretty good indication of how much it would take to damage a frame with a plow.

The plow should fail long before that. Even a commercial plow will fail before the frame crush zones. Otherwise you'd see a lot of ruined truck frames. And many/most trucks have snow plow packages from the factory. The blade is a trip blade - which doesn't really transfer all that much up to the frame when you hit something unless it's a big curb, or something like that. It just trips and runs over the object.

I went through multiple iterations of this plow for my last 4runner. The front suspension isn't really up to handling 800+lbs of commercial snow plow. So I built a plow that was somewhere in between a UTV and commercial duty. I managed to fold up a couple plow frames before I got it right. But a 4runner will plow some snow.

The first version had issues with how the trip geometry was designed. It didn't last more than a month or two before I folded it up.

 

[Jetboy]

If the Toyota crush area looked like this: (ford bronco) I don't think I'd want anything to do with bolting on a winch or a plow to the end of it.

But the Toyota looks like this: - as you can see there's just a dimple formed on each corner. Not as weak as other designs.

 

[Antman]

Care to elaborate? How do you think it will fail?

(This isn't my first rodeo.)

Not really- I said what I meant.

Not trying to be a douche- it seems like you spent a lot of time on this. Plowing is HARD on a vehicle, that's all.

Like I said- Good Luck!:yo:

 

[BlackWorksInc]

Honestly I think those dimples are plenty strong from what I have seen. As for the airbag sensors; that's a bit more complicated; just make sure you're wearing your seatbelt at all times when operating the vehicle or you may find that airbag will go off at even lower speeds than if you were wearing it.