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Feb. 25th, 2005 08:50 amThere is going to have to be plowing. The snow has stopped. It's daylight. There's more than three inches... only a hair more, but still. It should probably be plowed. I've had breakfast. I've had coffee. I can't really put this off too much longer, since BVP is supposed to deliver fuel oil and they're kind of twitchy about driving down here if the road ain't been plowed. *sigh* Another white knuckle adventure for me.
We really need to work on grading the road this summer. I've made a note.
Update: A truck-based snowplow is raised and lowered by means of a chain that runs from the plow to a hydraulic lifty thing mounted on the front of the truck. This chain is hooked in place and depends mostly upon the weight of the plow (considerable) to keep it hooked. However, if you hit something, like, say, large plow-eating rocks hidden under the snow on your seriously-in-need-of-a-grade dirt road, it is possible to bounce (yes, really) the plow hard enough to unhook the lifty-lowery chain from the hydraulics that make it go. The most interesting result of so doing is that the plow becomes stuck in the down position. This is not immediately apparent because the plow is already in the down position since you were probably plowing when you hit the plow-eating rock. You do not normally notice the lack of plow-raising ability until you attempt to put the plow in the up position, whereupon you find that you cannot.
Now, I said there was a hydraulic lifty thing. It is precisely that. It lifts. It does not really have a lower. It has a "not lifty" which turns into lower via the weight of the plow. That'd be the same plow that is not particularly ATTACHED at this point. And you discovered all of this when you tried to lift the plow via the lifty thing, which helpfully moved to the up position, so that the chain from the plow does not reach where it hooks onto the lifty thing. It also does not stretch, no matter how much you swear at it.
You see, do you not?
I called for technical support. Technical support says that the way to get the lifty thing back into the lower position (without a plow hanging on it) is to have two people, one in the truck pushing the lever to the not-lifty position, and the other person outside jumping up and down on the lifty thing to convince it that it needs to lower. I'm reasonably certain that the "jumping up and down" is not a figure of speech.
We really need to work on grading the road this summer. I've made a note.
Update: A truck-based snowplow is raised and lowered by means of a chain that runs from the plow to a hydraulic lifty thing mounted on the front of the truck. This chain is hooked in place and depends mostly upon the weight of the plow (considerable) to keep it hooked. However, if you hit something, like, say, large plow-eating rocks hidden under the snow on your seriously-in-need-of-a-grade dirt road, it is possible to bounce (yes, really) the plow hard enough to unhook the lifty-lowery chain from the hydraulics that make it go. The most interesting result of so doing is that the plow becomes stuck in the down position. This is not immediately apparent because the plow is already in the down position since you were probably plowing when you hit the plow-eating rock. You do not normally notice the lack of plow-raising ability until you attempt to put the plow in the up position, whereupon you find that you cannot.
Now, I said there was a hydraulic lifty thing. It is precisely that. It lifts. It does not really have a lower. It has a "not lifty" which turns into lower via the weight of the plow. That'd be the same plow that is not particularly ATTACHED at this point. And you discovered all of this when you tried to lift the plow via the lifty thing, which helpfully moved to the up position, so that the chain from the plow does not reach where it hooks onto the lifty thing. It also does not stretch, no matter how much you swear at it.
You see, do you not?
I called for technical support. Technical support says that the way to get the lifty thing back into the lower position (without a plow hanging on it) is to have two people, one in the truck pushing the lever to the not-lifty position, and the other person outside jumping up and down on the lifty thing to convince it that it needs to lower. I'm reasonably certain that the "jumping up and down" is not a figure of speech.
