building a small groomer puller

427cobra · Post by **427cobra** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:08 pm

That is pretty impressive!! Keep the updates coming....

Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:13 pm

Thanks Eric & Dave for your words of kindness......Just wish you guys were here to help me with the cab. I've been struggling with it all day and have accomplished practically nothing. I have to cut tons of compound angles and don't have the right tools to do it the easy way, so looks like my angle grinder is going to get a workout. I'll try to post a pic once I have the cab frame in place.

Mr. Deere · Post by **Mr. Deere** » Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:35 pm

Is it under its own power yet. Looks good.

Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:28 am

Mr. Deere wrote:Is it under its own power yet. Looks good.

Bob, I wish I could say it was.........however it's still a long way from running. In all honesty, there are days when I wish I'd never began this project..........but I guess I'm too far in to it to quit. It's just taking way longer than I thought. Sorta guessing I have over 500 hours into it already. It's the little things that seem to take the longest. For example, today I spent 11 hours constructing a brake caliper mount which also serves double duty as the front LH transmission mount. It's the piece in grey primer in the pic. It worked out OK........it's just that I thought I should have had it done before noon instead of working until 11:00pm on the thing. And to look at the part, it doesn't really appear very complicated.

Last week, I pretty much finished the cab framework. It turned out quite well, but again, took far longer than I had anticipated. I now am beginning to understand why prototypes, be it sleds or cars, cost so much money to build. You sometimes end up working for hours on one particular part of the machine only to later realize that what you built isn't going to work......then it's back to the drawing board to rethink and rebuild. I keep telling myself that this is still fun.

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JDT · Post by **JDT** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:31 am

Damn nice work Pete!

Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:41 am

I bought a nice looking set of 2 1/8" gauges on ebay for this rig a couple weeks ago. They still haven't arrived, but I figured I should think about where I'm going to put them. I decided that the neatest place would be overhead. I checked ebay for a gauge console that would fit nicely up against the cab roof. Nothing I found seemed like it would work.....so I decided to see what I could build on my own. I dug around in my old sled graveyard and happened upon a plastic fuel tank from a Skiroule RTX 300. Some of the angles on it looked like they had some potential......if I could cut it down and shape it to fit. So far, I have about 10 hours into this.......and I still need to sand it and fill it, and then cut out the gauge holes, but I think it'll look pretty sweet when it's finished and painted. Here's a pic of the tank more or less intact when I was just starting to hack it up.

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Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:42 am

A little further on in the process

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Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:46 am

I used Fusor 100EZ to glue the pices back together. It still doesn't look like much, but when the gauges show up, I'll finish the pod and post some pics of the final product. By the way, I ended up with Skiroule made in Canada showing on the front center of the pod. This will be easily seen through the windshield when you look at the machine from the front. Initially, I was going to grind it off and fill it........but after thinking about it, I figured....What the heck, I'll just leave that on it to make people wonder

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Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:56 am

Ok, enough about the gauge pod. Tomorrow, I start figuring out how to mount a Delco alternator on this rig. The tranny is from a Polaris Sportsman 700....thus it has an extra out put shaft which drives the front wheels on the ATV. My plan is to utilize this extra output shaft to spin the alternator. It'll only work when the machine is in motion, but I'm quite certain that will supply enough electrical power for my purposes. The original charging system will be powering the electric start and the headlights only. The rad fan motor, the cab heater motor, taillights, beacon, gauges, groomer electric lift actuator, 3 point hitch actuator, etc will get their juice from a second battery running off the alternator.The prob is that alternators aren't supposed to spin backwards because things like diodes apparently end up getting fried when that happens. The output shaft will of course, spin backwards everytime I put the tranny in reverse. My solution is to run a wire from the transmission position indicator switch to a relay which will defeat the alternator output when the tranny is in reverse. The alternator will still spin backwards, but no harm should come of it if my thinking is correct. What a process this is?

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Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:31 am

Here's a shot of the engine mounting plate I fabbed. Kinda on the heavy side, but I think it'll stand up well.

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427cobra · Post by **427cobra** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:57 am

Very nice......keep up the good work! What color is it going to be when finished?

Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:48 am

427cobra wrote:Very nice......keep up the good work! What color is it going to be when finished?

Thanks Eric. The body panels will be diamond plate aluminum and the frame will be Caterpillar yellow. I had hoped to completely finish the frame before harvest sets in so that I could disassemble it and paint the frame and be ready to begin final assembly after the crops are in the bin......but I'm not sure if I'll meet my timeline. The sweet part is that my local Ford dealer (who happens to be a big supporter of our local snowmobile club) has volunteered his body shop to paint the frame for free. That's a huge help because with all the little nooks and crannies in the framework, I really wasn't looking forward to painting it myself. And the guys at the Cardeager Ford body shop are first rate painters.

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Mr. Deere · Post by **Mr. Deere** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 8:00 pm

Nice I like that Tank. Why didn't you just get a Pod form a Tractor. The old jobs had pods like those with the radio in em. What motor is that again its clean. Is the alternator going to spin fast enough to actually do anything. You might need to Make up a rig to step up the RPM's. Also How do the chargers work on these motors again. I know they dont have an alternator.

Liquifire 4/6 · Post by **Liquifire 4/6** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 9:26 pm

Mr. Deere wrote:Nice I like that Tank. Why didn't you just get a Pod form a Tractor. The old jobs had pods like those with the radio in em. What motor is that again its clean. Is the alternator going to spin fast enough to actually do anything. You might need to Make up a rig to step up the RPM's. Also How do the chargers work on these motors again. I know they dont have an alternator.

Bob, I looked around quite a bit for a pod that would work, but I couldn't find anything that had the right dimensions. Plus, using one that was already made would have been way to easy.....lol. No big deal as I needed some practice working with plastic anyways because I'm going to have to build a dashboard control panel from scratch. That's gonna get complicated since it will also need to house my cab heater, windshield defroster and also have some vents throwing air back toward the operator.

The engine is a Polaris 440 liquid from a 93 Indy 440. I completely rebuilt it this summer and beadblasted it while I was at it. I choose it mainly because I know these engines are fairly reasonable on fuel and also because I happen to have an extra one that can easilly be rebuilt to have kicking around as a spare.

You make a good point regarding the alternator RPM's. With the gearing I have, it'll only be spinning about 1000 RPM at grooming speed (8-11 mph). I'm not sure if that's going to be sufficient. If it's not, I'll figure something else out later. The battery will also be getting a wee bit of juice from a couple solar panels I plan on installing on the roof. I might find that I will occaisionally need to unhook the groomer and take the unit up to top speed to get the battery fully charged. But perhaps it won't be a big problem because the second battery will not have near the electrical demands on it as would one in the average automobile. Guess I'll see how it works when I try it.

Post by **WinnipegStPaul9** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 9:35 am

Good Lord Pete. That rig is first class!! Great work. DA