Straight up- this is a long read with lots of pictures but hopefully it will help anyone looking to put a snow plow on their 80.
Due to multiple factors including limited finances, a rusty 80, my old plow truck burning up last winter, and general unwillingness to enter into car payments I decided to take an 8 foot quick-switch Fisher plow off a donor F350 and put it on my 80. Now, this was not an easy decision nor was it entered into lightly since the plow frame would radically reduce my ground clearance(that I worked so hard for) and pretty much puts an end to my off-roading, at least when the plow frame is mounted to the truck. So this is not going to be a project for everyone.
My late model 1995 truck is set up like so: factory suspension with no lift, 255-85 tires on factory wheels, 30mm spring spacers on the tired factory springs to get back to factory height, Firestone Coil-Rite air bags in the front and rear suspensions, and the front sway bar has been removed due to the axle brackets breaking off the axle. So that's where I started from. Actually the front air bags were added to support the weight of the plow and I did a thread about those here: Added Front Air Bags
So starting from the very beginning, living in Maine means dealing with snow and ice It's just paht of the deal up heah buddy. If you don't hire out your plowing you really need a plow truck of some type unless you have a small driveway and can get by with a snowblower. My yahd is pretty big and I have always used some kind of beater rusted out wreck of a plow truck to keep it all clear. Some folks put a plow on their daily driver but plowing is just about the worst thing you can do with a truck or to a truck and it typically kills the front end and warps the frame in pretty short order. Some plow manufacturers have put out small light homeowner plows that are usually plastic to reduce the weight and stress on the vehicle but it seems like they really won't handle much heavy wet snow. A real plow runs upwards of 700 pounds and many are close to 1000, and the weight of these ruins the front end of most trucks in very short order.
If you have a nice heated garage and a flat place to park then there are drive-up plow mounts that can be removed completely between storms to keep the weight from killing the truck. I don't have either one, and they also run upwards of $3000 installed and that simply was out of my price range. I haven't ever paid more than $750 for a plow truck and usually get at least 3-4 years out of them before retiring them, usually due to mechanical issues or simply falling apart due to rust.
If you don't live in the rust belt there's no way you can truly appreciate how pervasive and insidious the road-salt rust is. Here's an example:
That's what's left of a 1990 F350 1-ton dually frame that's had a 1/2 inch reinforcing strip welded to the bottom of it. It is completely and truly shot, and the rest of the frame is no better. The frame is warping and trying to spread apart and the ratchet straps are trying to hold it together. So despite it having a smooth running 7.5 liter V-8 and fully functional running gear, this truck is totally and completely done for. This is what living in the rust belt means. And just to rub salt in the wound-yeah, it truly is our tax money at work. Awesome.
So anyway, the cab on this truck is also rusted out and finally collapsed to the point that the cab floor was actually in contact with the exhaust headers. This caused a cabin fire when the carpets caught fire while plowing after a storm, which was a bit exciting but not my first time there either, and it was extinguished without much real fire damage:
So that pretty much sounded the death toll for this plow truck, although I did finish up the winter still plowing with it-just in short doses with cool-downs between them. The collapsing cab also jammed the driver's door and it would no longer open. I was going to force it but realized that the door latch was probably the only thing holding the whole back wall of the cab on, so I just crawled across to the passenger side to get in and out- not an easy feat when the roof has also sagged a good 3 inches. I had spent the previous summer rebuilding the plow with new pins, valves, solenoids, springs, and welding up the cracks and the plow itself was in pretty good shape and was working well. So at least I had that going for me. This type of plow was an electric over hydraulic, which lent itself to a pretty simple installation, and the 80 was fully paid for and had the front end rebuilt a few years ago, so that was another plus. My plow trucks usually have a broken windshield and no brakes, since the brake lines rot out faster than I can fix them and the calipers bind up with rust. As long as it can go forward and backward, and the heat, wipers, and plow work then it's a decent beater plow rig, all-and I do mean all-else is optional. A hard look at the budget showed we could either get another super-cheap beater and keep on keeping on, or I could actually spend a bit less and put the plow on my beloved and trustworthy 80 which is, finally, getting rusted to the point she's probably only got 4-5 years left on the road. As much as I hated to do it, the choice to put the plow on the 80 did make sense. So I gritted my teeth and set about doing it.
Firstly, as with all 80 projects, I searched here on Mud. Outside of a few threads with pics like this one: 80 Series Land Cruiser - Snow Plow? I couldn't really find much info. Seemed like the folks that had plows had small ones that were either done in a shop or by someone else, and there was not a lot of info about how it was actually done. Armed with the sure knowledge that I'm just too stupid to know when something's impossible, I set about swapping my full sized plow over.
I have a non-winch ARB front bumper and a 4x4 Labs rear(on the shortened frame) that I wanted to keep because I'm a Paramedic and do use my rig for rescues occasionally. This usually means I don't get to pick the trail but I need to get up it somehow, and often that means incurring some body damage. No big deal, she ain't no mall queen by a damn sight. And because of my work, the worse the weather gets the more I need to get to work, so there's that. And, the whitetail deer up here can run up to 200 pounds or more and they love to stand in the roads and lick the salt- usually on a blind corner. I'm not going to mention the Maine moose because those are so big no bumper in the world would help- they can wreck Peterbilts. So keeping the bumpers was very desirable, and actually worked out well to help with combining the geometry of the Fisher plow and the Land Cruiser.
So some pondering with a tape measure between the two trucks showed that the LC axle was much more forward than the Ford one, as the F350 had leaf springs and the LC has coils. This meant that keeping the frame mounted push plates-the part that transfers the force to the frame- clear of the front axle meant moving the entire plow forward. As the A-frame of my plow was about 26 inches from the hinge pins to the lifting chain and I didn't want to change that(to make repair parts simple) this meant that the pin location had to be pretty much set and the plates would have to accommodate that measurement. So that's where I started my layout from. The 80 frame was also almost 3 inches narrower but that really wasn't a problem since I couldn't use the push plates from the Ford anyway- they were totally wrong for my front end. My plow pin centers also needed to be 9 inches from the ground to keep my A-frame level, and that gave me the other measurement. So now I had somewhere to start.
So how to mount the push plates? I was wanting to keep them removable in case I ever wanted to do real wheeling again or transfer the plow to another 80 someday, so I settled on using as many factory bolts as possible. This will have to be proven in use as I have no way of testing the mounting any other way. My ARB was mounted from underneath by 4 large 12mmx1.25 bolts and on the sides by 4 more 10mmx1.25 bolts, so I planned on using all of those. I also wanted to engage the front crossmember as a reinforcement to take some of the force of pushing, which can be considerable when striking a icy snowbank or hidden rock or stump(see why plowing snow is so hard on a truck?) This led to some fitting as the bottom of the front crossmember on my truck sits at an angle, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
First job was to cut the existing mount off the Ford and see what I actually had to work with. The cutting torch left me this mess:
But the center section with the pin mounts is the only part of this I needed. It was cleaned up and narrowed to fit the new frame using the chop saw and lots of elbow grease. It cleaned up well:
This is where the tabs on the plow A-frame are mounted to pins on the truck. Large pins go through those holes to hold the back of the plow and most of the force of pushing goes through the pins, through this bar, and through the push plates into the frame. It needs to be right, and reusing the factory piece instead of making a new one made good sense. It had to be shortened to 30-1/2 inches to fit the new frame dimensions. Next I had to make something to mount it to.
I made cardboard templates repeatedly until I got something that was easy to make and covered all the mounting spots. It was very different than the Ford plates:
I decided that 1/4 inch plate was going to be sufficient for the forces involved since they would be reinforced many different ways. I was going to make them myself but after realizing how much cutting was involved I decided to have them made. This turned out to be a very wise decision as they came out uniform and right to size, which certainly would not have been the case if I tried to hack them out of solid plate with an angle grinder. I'm sure it could be done that way or with a handheld plasma cutter, but the shop cut them to my print and charged me just over $100 for the whole job, which saved me countless hours of screwing things up and having to redo them. Print to follow!
To be continued-
Due to multiple factors including limited finances, a rusty 80, my old plow truck burning up last winter, and general unwillingness to enter into car payments I decided to take an 8 foot quick-switch Fisher plow off a donor F350 and put it on my 80. Now, this was not an easy decision nor was it entered into lightly since the plow frame would radically reduce my ground clearance(that I worked so hard for) and pretty much puts an end to my off-roading, at least when the plow frame is mounted to the truck. So this is not going to be a project for everyone.
My late model 1995 truck is set up like so: factory suspension with no lift, 255-85 tires on factory wheels, 30mm spring spacers on the tired factory springs to get back to factory height, Firestone Coil-Rite air bags in the front and rear suspensions, and the front sway bar has been removed due to the axle brackets breaking off the axle. So that's where I started from. Actually the front air bags were added to support the weight of the plow and I did a thread about those here: Added Front Air Bags
So starting from the very beginning, living in Maine means dealing with snow and ice It's just paht of the deal up heah buddy. If you don't hire out your plowing you really need a plow truck of some type unless you have a small driveway and can get by with a snowblower. My yahd is pretty big and I have always used some kind of beater rusted out wreck of a plow truck to keep it all clear. Some folks put a plow on their daily driver but plowing is just about the worst thing you can do with a truck or to a truck and it typically kills the front end and warps the frame in pretty short order. Some plow manufacturers have put out small light homeowner plows that are usually plastic to reduce the weight and stress on the vehicle but it seems like they really won't handle much heavy wet snow. A real plow runs upwards of 700 pounds and many are close to 1000, and the weight of these ruins the front end of most trucks in very short order.
If you have a nice heated garage and a flat place to park then there are drive-up plow mounts that can be removed completely between storms to keep the weight from killing the truck. I don't have either one, and they also run upwards of $3000 installed and that simply was out of my price range. I haven't ever paid more than $750 for a plow truck and usually get at least 3-4 years out of them before retiring them, usually due to mechanical issues or simply falling apart due to rust.
If you don't live in the rust belt there's no way you can truly appreciate how pervasive and insidious the road-salt rust is. Here's an example:
That's what's left of a 1990 F350 1-ton dually frame that's had a 1/2 inch reinforcing strip welded to the bottom of it. It is completely and truly shot, and the rest of the frame is no better. The frame is warping and trying to spread apart and the ratchet straps are trying to hold it together. So despite it having a smooth running 7.5 liter V-8 and fully functional running gear, this truck is totally and completely done for. This is what living in the rust belt means. And just to rub salt in the wound-yeah, it truly is our tax money at work. Awesome.
So anyway, the cab on this truck is also rusted out and finally collapsed to the point that the cab floor was actually in contact with the exhaust headers. This caused a cabin fire when the carpets caught fire while plowing after a storm, which was a bit exciting but not my first time there either, and it was extinguished without much real fire damage:
So that pretty much sounded the death toll for this plow truck, although I did finish up the winter still plowing with it-just in short doses with cool-downs between them. The collapsing cab also jammed the driver's door and it would no longer open. I was going to force it but realized that the door latch was probably the only thing holding the whole back wall of the cab on, so I just crawled across to the passenger side to get in and out- not an easy feat when the roof has also sagged a good 3 inches. I had spent the previous summer rebuilding the plow with new pins, valves, solenoids, springs, and welding up the cracks and the plow itself was in pretty good shape and was working well. So at least I had that going for me. This type of plow was an electric over hydraulic, which lent itself to a pretty simple installation, and the 80 was fully paid for and had the front end rebuilt a few years ago, so that was another plus. My plow trucks usually have a broken windshield and no brakes, since the brake lines rot out faster than I can fix them and the calipers bind up with rust. As long as it can go forward and backward, and the heat, wipers, and plow work then it's a decent beater plow rig, all-and I do mean all-else is optional. A hard look at the budget showed we could either get another super-cheap beater and keep on keeping on, or I could actually spend a bit less and put the plow on my beloved and trustworthy 80 which is, finally, getting rusted to the point she's probably only got 4-5 years left on the road. As much as I hated to do it, the choice to put the plow on the 80 did make sense. So I gritted my teeth and set about doing it.
Firstly, as with all 80 projects, I searched here on Mud. Outside of a few threads with pics like this one: 80 Series Land Cruiser - Snow Plow? I couldn't really find much info. Seemed like the folks that had plows had small ones that were either done in a shop or by someone else, and there was not a lot of info about how it was actually done. Armed with the sure knowledge that I'm just too stupid to know when something's impossible, I set about swapping my full sized plow over.
I have a non-winch ARB front bumper and a 4x4 Labs rear(on the shortened frame) that I wanted to keep because I'm a Paramedic and do use my rig for rescues occasionally. This usually means I don't get to pick the trail but I need to get up it somehow, and often that means incurring some body damage. No big deal, she ain't no mall queen by a damn sight. And because of my work, the worse the weather gets the more I need to get to work, so there's that. And, the whitetail deer up here can run up to 200 pounds or more and they love to stand in the roads and lick the salt- usually on a blind corner. I'm not going to mention the Maine moose because those are so big no bumper in the world would help- they can wreck Peterbilts. So keeping the bumpers was very desirable, and actually worked out well to help with combining the geometry of the Fisher plow and the Land Cruiser.
So some pondering with a tape measure between the two trucks showed that the LC axle was much more forward than the Ford one, as the F350 had leaf springs and the LC has coils. This meant that keeping the frame mounted push plates-the part that transfers the force to the frame- clear of the front axle meant moving the entire plow forward. As the A-frame of my plow was about 26 inches from the hinge pins to the lifting chain and I didn't want to change that(to make repair parts simple) this meant that the pin location had to be pretty much set and the plates would have to accommodate that measurement. So that's where I started my layout from. The 80 frame was also almost 3 inches narrower but that really wasn't a problem since I couldn't use the push plates from the Ford anyway- they were totally wrong for my front end. My plow pin centers also needed to be 9 inches from the ground to keep my A-frame level, and that gave me the other measurement. So now I had somewhere to start.
So how to mount the push plates? I was wanting to keep them removable in case I ever wanted to do real wheeling again or transfer the plow to another 80 someday, so I settled on using as many factory bolts as possible. This will have to be proven in use as I have no way of testing the mounting any other way. My ARB was mounted from underneath by 4 large 12mmx1.25 bolts and on the sides by 4 more 10mmx1.25 bolts, so I planned on using all of those. I also wanted to engage the front crossmember as a reinforcement to take some of the force of pushing, which can be considerable when striking a icy snowbank or hidden rock or stump(see why plowing snow is so hard on a truck?) This led to some fitting as the bottom of the front crossmember on my truck sits at an angle, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
First job was to cut the existing mount off the Ford and see what I actually had to work with. The cutting torch left me this mess:
But the center section with the pin mounts is the only part of this I needed. It was cleaned up and narrowed to fit the new frame using the chop saw and lots of elbow grease. It cleaned up well:
This is where the tabs on the plow A-frame are mounted to pins on the truck. Large pins go through those holes to hold the back of the plow and most of the force of pushing goes through the pins, through this bar, and through the push plates into the frame. It needs to be right, and reusing the factory piece instead of making a new one made good sense. It had to be shortened to 30-1/2 inches to fit the new frame dimensions. Next I had to make something to mount it to.
I made cardboard templates repeatedly until I got something that was easy to make and covered all the mounting spots. It was very different than the Ford plates:
I decided that 1/4 inch plate was going to be sufficient for the forces involved since they would be reinforced many different ways. I was going to make them myself but after realizing how much cutting was involved I decided to have them made. This turned out to be a very wise decision as they came out uniform and right to size, which certainly would not have been the case if I tried to hack them out of solid plate with an angle grinder. I'm sure it could be done that way or with a handheld plasma cutter, but the shop cut them to my print and charged me just over $100 for the whole job, which saved me countless hours of screwing things up and having to redo them. Print to follow!
To be continued-
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