Hi everyone, obviously I'm new here but not new to snow cats. I'm restoring a SW 54 as a snowblower carrier. I've gone through the 251, rewired, all new copper heater lines, restored the gas tank, new fuel lines, removed the Chrysler fan and installed an electric fan and sensor, and a 1 wire GM alternator.
The thing runs great and steers well (I haven't gotten into the diff yet as it is working well). Here's my question and dilemma. As a snowblower carrier the groundspeed is too high even in first.
As I've been reading through the threads I read that the ring and pinion are Dana 44 standard gearsets although other posts seem to indicate the gears are proprietary and are $3000.00 a set. I was hoping to change to 5.83s but not ate that price. Maybe someone can set me straight.
At $3000 I may have to resort to my backup plan of modifying a Toyota transfer case as an auxiliary transmission.
Hopefully I can contribute too as I have 35 years running and working on just about any heavy grooming machine you can think of from Tuckers, 1800's, 3700's, 4700's, BR 400+, BR275, BR350, Bison, Beast, T4's, all PB from 200's through 600's and 600W's
The thing runs great and steers well (I haven't gotten into the diff yet as it is working well). Here's my question and dilemma. As a snowblower carrier the groundspeed is too high even in first.
As I've been reading through the threads I read that the ring and pinion are Dana 44 standard gearsets although other posts seem to indicate the gears are proprietary and are $3000.00 a set. I was hoping to change to 5.83s but not ate that price. Maybe someone can set me straight.
At $3000 I may have to resort to my backup plan of modifying a Toyota transfer case as an auxiliary transmission.
Hopefully I can contribute too as I have 35 years running and working on just about any heavy grooming machine you can think of from Tuckers, 1800's, 3700's, 4700's, BR 400+, BR275, BR350, Bison, Beast, T4's, all PB from 200's through 600's and 600W's