Tyler.....you da man!!! Thank you very much......I've got pics of the spring compressor and the griz on my page now. Hopefully they came out ok for you guys to see.....

 

Sweet, just gotta wait for a mod to approve them.

 

I have a couple of questions: I have an 05 grizzly 660, and already have a moose plow, and a warn winch. I was looking to add the hydraulic angle kit to my blade, but the blackline looks like it would be much more useful for plowing light dirt, gravel due to the downpressure capability. I've tried this with my moose, and the lack of downpressure makes it almost useless for this purpose.

So my 2 questions are:

1. can the downpressure be adjusted so that it can actually go LOWER than the bottom of the tires, effectively raising the front tires off the ground a little bit, like a dozer? Is this effective in terms of the quad's ability to continue to push (let's say light gravel, or even heavy snow/ice) only with the rear wheels contacting the ground?

2. I love my winch, but don't see how this can stay on the quad, looking at the mounting kit required for the blackline... Or am I mistaken? Currently, my winch fits neatly under the front fender, between the guts of the front end.

3. Okay, I had a 3rd question. I noticed on the blackline webpage, that the SPEED of the actuator is a meager 1 inch per second... I can't imagine how frustrating this must be when trying to plow snow and you're trying to move fast. Is it really that slow? 10 seconds is a pretty darn long time to wait to raise the blade from full height to the ground..

I'd love to hear any opinions any of you guy's have, thanks!!

 

Any time I have tried running more than 60 pounds of down pressure with my system (which is equavlant to running solid down pressure like the Blackline plow) I find the ATV won't handle it. The blade hangs up on small obstacles or variances in the surface being plowed and the ATV just spins out. Typically I run 30 to 50 pounds of down pressure depending on snow conditions and size of ATV. Running this amount of pressure allows the blade to raise up if an obstacle is hit or the surface being plowed is irregular. If enough down pressure is applied to take a substantial amount of weight off the front of the ATV then the ATV will just spin out. Keep in mind, even a small dozer will have 1500 to 2000 pounds of machine weight for every foot of blade width. An ATV will only have 100 to 200 pounds of machine weight per foot of blade width. I guess one way to look at it is a lot of down pressure on the plow will allow your ATV to act like a dozer but the ATV isn't going to be able to carry through on its part of the act.

I agree with you on the actuator speed. I use a Warn 2.5 which runs at 3.8 inches per second which is about right. There are a couple others with my system on their ATV's and they use the Warn 1.5. It only runs at 2.2 inches per second which seems awfully slow to me when I run their machines. 1 inch per second just wouldn't cut it for me.

 

This is my first year plowing,so ignor this if it sounds negitive.
I'm not seeing where the down force on a Blackline plow is so important. The weight of the plow is more then enough to plow snow. Where i plow has no flat surfaces and without some form of float i'd tear up everything i ran over.
Seams rough on the machine.
As far as the power angle goes, I'm using the Cycle country power angle. It works but it is pretty cheesy. A cable wrapped around a spindle run by small gearmotor. If it hadn't come on the plow and i had paid $180.00 i would have been torqued. As i said, it works but about every other time i use it i need to dick around with the cable adjuster spring. It does beat climbing on and off the quad.
Deerkiller

 

If a person doesn't have to push a great deal of snow then down pressure isn't that important. Without some sort of down pressure I wouldn't be able to use an ATV to push snow in my area. One of the big advantages of a down pressure system is you get better control of the blade. When pushing through deep snow I will start to lose traction, I can just pull up the blade an inch or so which puts more weight on the front tires and allows me to keep pushing. Without the down pressure the blade would just continue to raise up in the snow causing me to high center on the left over snow.

 

If you don't have any downpressure your front suspension slack gets taken up every time you get any debris under the blade...the blade just lifts up the front suspension of the machine and you have to go back and forth multiple times to do a good job cleaning concrete....its very eneffective compared to running the blackline with the downpressure. I tried running with little or no downpressure at first when I was worried about wearing out or damaging the blade, and there was no comparison to how the machine plowed with the downpressure. You can technically lift the front end of the quad off the ground. I set the adjustment on the linkage to give me just the right amount of downpressure at maximum down and it is working out perfect...this way I can just put the blade all the way down without having to play with the handlebar adjustment button.

 

neversunk: Off topic here. I see you own a K1200LT. How do you like it, and are there any good forums like this one? I'll be getting a used K1200LT next week. Had a Royal Star Venture, and currently ride a G.W. 1500 with a sidecar for our 7 year old daughter. Have to get another 2 wheeler for when I want to go myself or I'll go nuts! Thanks for the info. If you would rather e-mail me, that would be fine. weridets@verizon.net

 

OH yea...I love that BMW! I emailed you..if you don't get it my email address is fishing4fun at (substitute the @) comcast.net Glenn

 

Got it! Thanks!