Kubota RTV900 w/ curtis snow plow

Hey guys,
Does anyone if you re-plumb the RTV 900 w/ Curtis blade to be able to have hydraulic up and down functions so as to have some form of down pressure? Or should I just fabricate a back drag blade. As it is there is no down pressure to back drag snow away from garage doors etc. and this is a must in my case. This unit does have hydraulic dump bed.
Does anyone have any suggestions??

Jeff

Hi Jeff, welcome to Net Tractor Talk.
I am interested in the answer to your question also, as I don't know.
I will modify the title to include RTV and move this question to the RTV forum so this is seen by the RTV group.

Welcome 4hogans,

Glad you showed up !!!!

This is not a snow plow. It's a dirt drag ..... ( See all the dust on RTV )

We used it to spread dirt on my boys place before he built his shop in the back.
Manual pick-up and drop. I have the manual bed lift on mine.

I made this thing. And it worked. Turn out better than we thought.
Named it : Two Guns Dirt Management Equipment Tool

P.S. You can turn the blade at what direction one wants

Yeah, I thought about a Farmboy 3 point because I have a 3 point blade for my JD Utility tractor but wow they are steep. I just wondered if there was any way to get the snowplow to have down pressure?

4hogans said:

Hey guys,
Does anyone if you re-plumb the RTV 900 w/ Curtis blade to be able to have hydraulic up and down functions so as to have some form of down pressure? Or should I just fabricate a back drag blade. As it is there is no down pressure to back drag snow away from garage doors etc. and this is a must in my case. This unit does have hydraulic dump bed.
Does anyone have any suggestions??

Jeff

Click to expand...

Hi Jeff, What type of cylinders do you have? I don't know anything about snow plows but I put double acting cylinders on my weed wiper when I converted it from manual to hydraulic . I can hold the position at any height with them. I have force up and down with the double acting cylinders. The single acting have gravity or spring return and only one hose on the cylinder while the double acting has 2. This is for pressure either way . I am still learning but so far it has worked well for me . bordercollie ..

I am not sure as of yet. I will be able to tell you after saturday when I pick it up. I have a JD utility tractor that I am replacing with this unit for the cab and heat. I am curious as to what a weed wiper is if you could send a picture it would be appreciated. All I know about this unit is that it is electric actuated up and down and hydraulic right to left angle. I assume the hydraulics work off of the rear dump bed hydraulics.

4hogans said:

I am curious as to what a weed wiper is if you could send a picture it would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Here is the original thread from when bordercollie got the weed wiper:
http://www.nettractortalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13128&highlight=weed+wiper

And another thread with pics of the weed wiper and the tranny cooler that was added.

http://www.nettractortalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14755&highlight=hydraulic+cooler+added

Both are very informative reads.

Doc, thank you for posting the links.
4hogans, I got my cylinders from surplus center. It is fun to look at their catalog which is also on line. I did some guessing on my simple project and it worked out ok-- thankfully. bordercollie

JUst found this and figured id reply while i was looking into a different thread.I have the Curtis plow on mine.It has its pros and cons.Pro is I can plow out my drive way in about 45 minutes with no problems and works well for moving dirt in the summer.Cons the lack of down pressure.The pro out weighs the cons.If you want down pressure you can go the cheap easy way and add a 1.25 dia.steel tube to where the chain is for the lift.Slide the chin up through the pipe and reconnect it at the top lift.This gives you a bit of down pressure and most of all dosnt let the plow float up.2nd better option would be if you have hydrolycs on your machine with quick disconnects replace the electric over hydrolyc culinder with a straight up hydrolyc cylinder eliminating the chain and go from the plow frame to the top of the mount making it more like a dozer style system.Lots of dow pressure but the only downfall of this is you have no free float when heading up hill or small grades so you willl have to manually control the plow height.

I would think that you would have float? At least on my 1140 with hyd dump, there is a float position if I push the level all the way forward.

I added a hydraulic up and down on my Curtis plow to replace the electric motor. Works fantastic and was about half the price of the electric lift. I will get you some pictures tonight if I can remember... I copied someone on this forum that had done it before. Surplus center was definitely the best place to get the hydraulic cylinder.

Yes some things do have a float position it all depends on how it is set up.On mine i have an aftermarket hydrolyc dump from TRV hitchworks for dumping.It is great and useful but only controls the bed.I was looking into putting in a control valve but them things must be gold plated as they arnt cheap at all. I may look into the posibility of finding or making a manual valve switch to place under the hood just to switch from the bed to plow but havnt gotten that far yet.I know my original electric lift is on its last leg.It still is strong but over the years i have a broken wire right as it goes in the motor and i havnt figured a way to take it apart to replace it yet so i have it Obamaed right now.There was just enough wire sticking out of the rubber bushing where the wire comes out so i used a sheet metal screw and ran it in the gromet and was lucky to grab enough of the old wire and aded a loop and a new piece of wire that way and used rtv sealant to seal the connections then used a wide zip tie to hold the wires tight on the motor so the wires wouldnt break from going up and down.After 10 plus years im doing more and more maintance on the plow to keep her alive.The main frame has been getting several stress cracks over the years along with the swivel bracket. I had to grind them out space them and refill them this season.It had to happen on that 20 below day as nothing breaks when its warm out lol. IM trying to baby it this year so i dont have to stop to fix it.This summer ill pull it all apart and see what needs welding and what needs replacing on it.The older curtis plow isnt bad and has moved thousands of pounds of snow here but there are IMO a few design flaws in it.It dosnt lift up no where as far as it should and likes to get you stuck because lack of clearence.This spring Im going to look at welding some new mounting ears on the plow mount on the machine and move them foreward then shorten the bars coming off of the plow and drilling new holes to remount back on the frame.Someone here has already done something very similar to this and it looks like it workd out real nice.I dont remember if he shortened the 2 bars on his or not but I know I will as the added 12 inches will make a difference in fitting it in some places .Plus with the new setup the plow will actually lift high enough for clearence and not hit the frame stops allowing me to actually push the snow higher.So many ideas so little energy it seems.I need super peanut here for a day to help me out lol. I cant say enough about the folks here.AThey are all great with info and would help anyone any time.To bad we cant all live on the same 5000 acre farm and be one big happy family.Collie can tend the cows I can break things BC zoom can laugh at me and peanut can fix what we break.then we can all have breakfast lmao.