I recently purchased a snow blade in anticipation of the snow this winter. Please let me know if I have this figured out correctly. If I want to place a snowplow on my Craftsman lawn tractor, I first have to remove the mower deck. Then in spring when it's time to start mowing again, I get the extreme joy of having to try to reinstall the mower deck and removing nearly all the hardware from the snow blade. Maybe it's just that my hands are too large to cram themselves into the various locations to bolt everything together, but I cannot see having to redo this every year. Do the other users swap the mower and blade out or do you just buy a second lawn tractor?
I use the same tractor and swap out. Taking the deck off and putting it back on is a pain, but it only takes about a half hour or so. Your blade should be a simple switch out. I can't speak to the 48" blade, but my 42" itakes me less than 5 minutes.
#% minutes, twice a year seems to be a better use of resources than spending $1000 minimum for a second tractor.
In response to Hokearmy's post from February 05 2010 03:04PM
I purchased the 48 inch snow blade for my garden tractor and to answer the question about the mover deck, yes, you have to remove the mower deck. I have the 54 inch cutting deck and it attached to the mower by cotter pins in 5 places and it only take me 5 minutes to remove. As for the snow blade, once you install the brackets on the lawn mower, you can then remove the snow blade by removing the rear cotter pin and the two front cotter pins and that only takes 3-5 minuts to remove the snow blade. You don't ever have to remove the brackets from the frame of the mower once you install them for the snow blade. Hope this helps. No need to purchase a different lawn tractor.
Years back, I had a SEARS tractor/mower. got it used with small snow/dozer blade, snow blower, and mower deck. like previously stated, a few pins and it was off or on within about 5 mins or so. Wish I had it now. Wife donated it because she didn't think it was useful. Should have gotten rid of her but the tractor couldn't cook..