Snow Blower
The snow blower is a machine attached to a D4. Normally this is bolted onto the front of a bulldozer, but our D4s were too small to handle the weight. The simple solution was to chop the snow blower in half & bolt half on the front of the D4 and half onto the back. This balanced nicely, creating a very useful tool in a place where the snow accumulates around everything, all the time.
The Snow Blower
This is a close up of the business end of a snow blower. This is, basically, a D4 bulldozer with a big screw blade fitted to the front. It chews up snow, shovels etc & spits it (them) out of the spout at the top. A very handy tool, bearing in mind the amount of snow we had lying about the place.
Underneath it's just a D4.
Digging a hole the easy way
If you look closely at the back of the bull dozer, you can see the other half of the snow blower (big mustard coloured box). If the whole machine had been bolted to the front of the D4, it would have toppled forward as D4s are not all that big in bulldozer terms.
Chew, chew
Here's the snow blower in action. It's an excellent way to dig a big hole. This hole was used to take a profile of ice cores for density versus depth measurements. The scientists thought I'd dig a 4m deep hole, wide enough to operate a metre long ice core drill with a shovel, but I had a better idea and the tractor mechanic needed to test the newly serviced snow blower.
This thing would eat anything placed in front of it...
...including met men and shovels...
..and spat them out the top.
It can keep on going down & down. Much easier than a shovel.