A few weeks ago, I did something I’ve never done before. I ran over my own snowplow.
I don’t mean that I ran it over because it was sitting in the yard, and as a stationary object I drove over it. What I mean is, I was snowplowing WITH it, and then I ran it over WHILE using it.
If that didn’t make sense, believe me, I was bewildered when it happened too.
The other day, while plowing snow with my Suburban, I was happily plowing along our subdivision road. I was plowing down hill, and before the recent snow, we got rain and ice, so under the snow was really, really slick. Of course, a Suburban being rather large, I couldn’t stop or back up when going down the steep-ish hill. Once you start, you have to go to the bottom. Of course, half way down is a dip in the hill, where the road has been eroded by water running off of a nearby hill.
While making another pass, my plow went into the dip, and in an instant, I heard a large “pop” sound from under the front of the rig. Realizing something was wrong, I tried to turn away from the plow, to my left. I felt the front of the Suburban lift up like I was going over a humongous road bump, and then drop back down on the other side of it! Still trying to turn left, I slid forward and felt the passenger rear tire go up and over the same speed bump. Yes, I just ran over my snowplow.
When I got to the bottom of the hill, I got out and looked over the whole situation. The top part of the snowplow mount was still attached to my Suburban, and it broke at the welds, leaving the rest of the mount attached to the snowplow which was up the hill in the middle of the road. Further, on it’s way off, the plow took a large snarl of wiring with it, and part of the front cowling of the bumper.
I looked all over under the vehicle, but, praise God, there was no damage to the undercarriage. However, on it’s way over, the rear passenger tire took a nasty hit to the sidewall which gouged the tire and let out all the air. I had a flat Still on the snowy subdivision road, with a useless tire and a snowplow blocking half of the lane, I decided to throw a strap out the back and just drag the plow back home while riding on the rim of my tire.
Unfortunately for me, the spare tire was the factory original from 2004, and the mechanism to lower the tire was so rusty it didn’t work anymore. I ended up sawing off the spring clip on the bottom and letting the spare tire fall out. Of course it took me an hour of trying everything under the sun to get that tire off the usual way before I tried that, so there was a lot of wasted time!
Check out that rusty rim!
Last weekend I took some time to fix my wiring that had been ripped out. Fortunately most of it was for the plow, only a small portion of it being for the lighting. Now that I’ve fixed all of the rig side wiring, I will still have to fix the snow plow wiring, one busted hose, and the welds. Not too bad considering that I ran it over! I thought there would be a lot of damage to the motor or blade, but it must have folded forward on it’s springs and somehow missed the control motor when I went over it. All that to say I’ve been busy fixing things lately.
Linux – keep it simple.