A dirt runner, such as those used on street sweeping machines and the like, and a flexible support for the dirt runner to be attached to a housing portion. Flexible supports such as elongate strips of elastomeric material are fastened along the upper portion of the strips to the housing portion of the machine and the dirt runner is fastened along the lower portion of the elastomeric strip. The dirt runner is adequately supported to be driven in its longitudinal direction of travel and more freely flexible in lateral directions to its direction of travel. The dirt runner is uniquely designed to accommodate the additional feature of the flexible means such that the dirt runner and flexible means may be substituted directly to the existing street sweeper machines without modification thereof.
A street sweeper drag shoe, formed of a horizontally elongated rubber-like strip, having a bottom ground-engaging edge surface, is provided with vertically arranged wear resisting pins embedded within the strip, with the lower ends of the pins exposed at, and flush with, the edge surface. Each pin is formed of a thin wall steel tube filled with a closely packed matrix of particles of hard metal carbide surrounded by a soft, heat conductive, copper-like binder. The tube outer wall surface is provided with surface irregularities, such as knurls or threads. The pins are each forcibly driven endwise into smaller cross-sectional size holes that are pre-formed in the strip and that open at the strip bottom surface. Thus, the strip, rubber-like material resiliently yields as the pin is inserted, and then resiliently grips and interlocks with the tube outer wall surface.
A sweeper drag shoe is formed of an elongated, flat, inverted channel filled with a matrix made of irregular shaped, packed together, hard carbide particles and soft, ductile relatively resilient brazing metal filling the spaces between and generally surrounding and brazing together the particles. The exposed matrix provides a ground engaging face which resists wear due to abrasion. The brittle carbide particles are protected against road shock caused breakage by means of the ductile brazing material absorbing impact loads and permitting limited relative movement of the particles within the solid matrix.
A street sweeper drag shoe formed of an essentially planar, elongated strip of an elastomeric material. Such material being of sufficient hardness and resiliency that no reinforcing strips are required for the drag shoe to retain its shape. Especially, the drag shoe can be manufactured of polyurethane having a horizontal platform directed toward the inside of the drag shoe to help a cylindrical sweeper brush or other sweeper mechanism to move collected road debris up into the sweeper vehicle's hopper.
A street sweeper drag shoe of cast austempered ductile iron used with a rotary broom in sweeping, whereby escaping debris from under a contact skid is recaptured. The street sweeper drag shoe contains a deflection plate that redirects bristle tip movement inwardly to allow the broom to recapture debris which escapes during normal operation. The street sweeper drag shoe also includes an angled wedge for concentrating outer bristles of the broom into a rotating barrier to prevent debris migration to the ends of the broom. The contact skid exhibits total planar contact with the roadway without interceding carbide wear plates.
A sweeper drag shoe used with a rotary broom in sweeping, whereby escaping debris from under a contact skid is recaptured. The sweeper drag shoe contains a deflection plate that redirects bristle tip movement inwardly to allow the broom to recapture debris which escapes during normal operation. The sweeper drag shoe also includes an angled wedge for concentrating outer bristles of the broom into a rotating barrier to prevent debris migration to the end of the broom.
