Curtis blade on 2210

Howdy all...mentioned this project in an earlier post so here goes! Comments welcome...

I have been looking for a faster way to clear lighter snows from my long driveway and 30' X 40' pads in front of both garages and wanted a wider blade for my 2210. Found a 6 foot Curtis blade on craigslist that came off of a Polaris Ranger and included the mounting frame for $300 - perfect! Had looked into a loader mount but wasn't entirely comfortable putting stress on the loader arms so a frame mount made the most sense to me.

Since winter is right around the corner (it's snowing as I type this) I decided to go with a winch lift and to keep the manual angling.....hydraulics can come later...wanted to get this setup ASAP so I can put it to use.

So here is what I did late this week with pictures that follow:

Connecting blade frame to tractor. The blade frame mounts measured 12" outside to outside and there is 13.75" inside the lower mounts on my 2210. Persuaded some 1" TSC bushings to go in the 1" OD blade frame holes. Then added a 3/4" OD tube inside, all the way across. Inside of that is a high strength 5/8" JD bar that originally came with my front weights - I don't use it anymore and it was just a bit long. This bar is the point of contact with the tractor frame. On the outside I bent up some tabs to keep the blade in place when raised or backdragging. This part went pretty fast.

Lifting the blade. Noticed that my local Harbor Freight had the "Badlands" 2000 pound winch for $49 bucks - perfect so I picked one up. Added a couple of pieces of angle iron to each side of the grill guard (tough steel to drill BTW) and mounted the winch to this. It took a while to run the power cables and we decided to fab up a temporary mount for the switch on the RH side of the dash. Need a switched power lead for the switch and tapped the PTO lead for this.

The moment of truth......hooked up the blade to the tractor, extended cable from winch, connected hook to lifting eye and viola! Tractor snowplow! (That is my son in the last picture.....he's pretty geeked about the new attachment....)

This was a quickie project. I would normally put more thought into it but it should work well enough for this winter....I'll need to keep an eye on that 5/8 bar as it will be the stress point when pushing snow. I am looking online for the right size hyd. cylinders and will likely add power angle in the future. Also discussed building a 'winter' grillguard with the hyd. or winch mounts built in, that can go on with the blade and come off for the loader. (BTW....the winch is not in the way of the loader so it can stay on, at least for this winter.)

Once I've used it a few times I'll post some results...and hopefully more pictures if I remember to take some!

Fredster