Snow plow spreading salt and a shower of sparks – a pretty noisy and dramatic night time sighting. The plow was trying to plow a street lacking snow, going first east then west. That can’t be good for the blade or the street, but nothing caught on fire at least. About 10 p.m.
Liberty btw Third and Fifth
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This appeared to be both dangerous and damaging. Can anyone say if that is true? Dangerous because of the shower of sparks the driver was creating, that went beyond the underside of the plow truck; and damaging as the blade was clearly scraping the road itself. I would think the blade would both wear out and also become misshapen, and it would also loosen asphalt patches on the road and create new potholes. But perhaps this is just normal practice? The only snow on the road was between the lanes, and that looked pretty much the same before and after the plow went by, but the application of salt would likely clear that in time. Is there a logical explanation?
It’s not ideal, but not really bad for the blade unless it’s done over a long period of time. Plow blades are tough. It probably doesn’t do that much damage to the road either, unless there are already loosened chunks of stuff (such as patched, as you say). It can do damage to the transmission/power train in a smaller truck, I think, but municipal snowplows are rugged bastards.
Once I went to Ypsi to help someone transport a mattress in our truck, which had already had the plow put on it for the winter, but it was all we had. On the way back we took I-94, and I was tooling along about 60 when suddenly there was an enormous roostertail of sparks shooting up *through* the engine compartment, over the cab and in an arc behind us. It was terrifying and spectacular. My friend, who was following behind me, thought that the engine had exploded and I was probably being consumed in the fireball. Later I realized that, over a certain speed air pressure pushed the blade down… down… down until suddenly it made contact with the highway surface and then kapow!
Anyway (and this is the point of the story), spectacle aside, the plow blade was completely unharmed, and, as far as I know, I-94 was OK too.
Thanks, Rod. That’s the sort if information I was looking for. Unfortunately that section of Liberty, especially heading west, is nothing but patches over patches over patches. So it seems like a pretty bad idea to scrape them up. Oh well.
Dramatic story of your trip on I-94!