Manitoba man builds screw drive vehicle using tractor

May 05, 2016

Whole process is documented on YouTube

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

A Manitoba man’s passion for tinkering with machinery has led him to building a screw drive vehicle using a tractor body.

Known on YouTube as REDNIC79, he documents the project from beginning to end in a 16-part series of videos.

“I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos on Russian screw vehicles,” he said in the first video, which was published on Jan. 16, 2015. “I always thought they were pretty awesome and ridiculous as well, so right up my alley.”

Using a 16 horsepower MTD 960 Turf Trac garden tractor for the body, he removes the wheels and attaches a five-foot pipe on each side.

The fourth video in the series, published on Feb. 6, 2015, documents how he makes the augers and attaches them to the pipes, which he calls pods.

“There was absolutely nothing fun about that,” he said during the video before giving the viewers a look at what the first screw looks like with its completed auger.

His project wasn’t without its obstacles.

The tenth video in the series, published May 19, 2015, shows the tractor completed and ready for testing.

After trying to traverse through deep mud, the tractor gets stuck and must be dug out with an excavator – which he also built.

“There’s a huge crack in the axle shaft,” he said. “The torque of going through that mud bent the axle and blew the transmission.”

In the sixteenth and final video, published on April 29, 2016, he brings the completed tractor out for a test drive which includes a documented speed of 3mph and going through a pond he estimates is at least six inches deep.

“It’s definitely hard to steer that’s for sure,” he said in the video.

Some of the videos do contain strong language.

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