MyFishFinder.com Just like iceshanty but warmer
I have the clam plate, personally I wouldnt see the need for it unless your drill was getting bogged down. My milwaukee has no problem. If your constantly drilling through really thick ice and drilling a ton of holes it may make your drill and batteries have a little longer lifespan. At this point ice fishing is gaining in popularity and the products are coming fast to keep that profit train coming lol.
Does anyone have any insight on the new Clam Power Drive Gear Box? Trying to determine if it would be beneficial to replace the gearbox on my Clam Drill Adapter plate.https://shop.clamoutdoors.com/power-drive-gear-box.html
If you have one of the first gear boxes that Clam put out then you may want to switch it out for the new one. the old gear boxes had issues and this new one is a way better design and is built a lot beefier then the original ones were. only down side to the new one is it will be slow so don't expect to win any drilling contests with it. what it does offer is a lot more torque so you have the ability to turn up to a 10 inch bit with it. personal I would only use it with a 8 inch bit but 10 will turn with it too. I will be replacing the original gear box I have with one of these new one and will pair it with 8 inch hand auger bit. only plan to use it if I chase northern and channel catfish otherwise I run a 6 inch on a plate with no gear box for everything else. updating your drill will help too. look at either a Dewalt 995/996 or one of the Millwaukee fuel drills with the 1200 inch pounds. these are the recommended drills for the plate.
My K-drill seems to make the Milwaukee drill (mounted on the Clam Plate) work harder than needed. [/quote I agree 100%. Kdrill only gets used when I'm too lazy to move the permy and need to reopen old holes. Mora is way easier on batteries.
Quote from: defiant1 on Oct 06, 2020, 03:45 PMMy K-drill seems to make the Milwaukee drill (mounted on the Clam Plate) work harder than needed. [/quote I agree 100%. Kdrill only gets used when I'm too lazy to move the permy and need to reopen old holes. Mora is way easier on batteries.Kdrill does great in wheel house for sure. I ordered a PistolBit 8" for hole hopping. Hopefully, that will do the trick, trying to determine if I am going to mount it to a Clam Plate or not.
If you plan on going a 10 inch auger then the Gear Box may be for you . Maybe if your drill is a little underpowered the Gear Box may be for you. The new 10" ION appears to be a composite design with shaver/Mora blades this may help if ION/Eskimo ever make the 10" auger drill unit in a pistol bit offering. ServiceMaster dosent appear to be offering a 10" LiteFlight this season . But if you want to turn a 10" steel auger this would certainly help if it works as advertised .
Great point! This is what is listed on Clam's site as far as specs for the gearbox... Planetary gearbox has 3.6:1 gear ratioBolts to all 2nd generation Clam Drill Plates (with 4 bolts)Output shaft is 18MM, adapts to most hand augersInput shaft works with all ˝” chucksWeighs 1.5 poundsEnables users to drill both 8 and 10” holes with a drill plate and most industrial cordless drills...I'm I right in assuming an adapter of some sort would be needed as most ten inch auger bits would be a larger size then the output shaft?`
Kdrill does great in wheel house for sure. I ordered a PistolBit 8" for hole hopping. Hopefully, that will do the trick, trying to determine if I am going to mount it to a Clam Plate or not.
If I still had my kdrill i would say its a must. I have always had a clam plate on my drill setup. The kdrill had tendency to catch at the bottom of the hole or even part way down. This was mostly fixed when i got a 9ah battery for it. Had to buy a new drill this year because my chuck was cracked and upon further inspection i found that the drill housing was cracked almost in two! Got a lite flite last year it cuts vey smooth and doesn’t catch on the bottom of the hole.I might end up getting this to try on my setup, maybe help make my new drill last more than a few years.