Kubota Resurrected

The Mach V is running again. I got the tractor put back together. Nearly.

What a rotten experience this has been. I installed a quick attach adaptor without help, and then I did a lot of welding and cutting on the bucket so it would fit. I felt invincible. Then my steering blew out. Then I found out removing the cylinder for repacking was major surgery. Then I got the silly thing out and got it fixed, and when I put it back in, I cracked the engine’s front cover, resulting in over $2000 in repair costs plus months of life with no tractor.

Now I’m back where I hoped to be a couple of months ago. I thought I would begin working on a new set of quick attach brush forks back then, but I found myself plunged into the horror of cascading parts failures and extremely slow repairs.

Things are going incredibly well now that I have an organized and roomy shop. The weather is terrible; hot and humid with intermittent torrential rain. Because I can get the tractor into the shop, I was able to fix it anyway, in relative comfort.

You wouldn’t believe how fast work goes when you have 6 tool chests and you know what’s in every drawer. I think I got a lot less exercise than I usually do in the shop, because instead of walking around for hours looking for things, I went straight to the chests and got what I wanted.

This morning, I had a tractor with no sheet metal forward of the dash, no battery, no radiator, a gallon of dirty oil, and a two-gallon hydraulic fluid shortage. By around 5:30 p.m., everything was fixed but the sheet metal. No point in buttoning a project up until you see if it works.

When I fired the tractor up, it ran fine. After giving it time to circulate the hydraulic fluid, I used the steering and the loader, and everything worked. My bucket was lying in the driveway where it had been for a couple of days, and I was able to reattach it.

Tomorrow I should be able to get the sheet metal on, and then I’ll order a few screws to replace the ones a battery spill ruined before my time.

I plan to make the battery area better than Kubota did. I’m putting the battery in a plastic tray to catch leaks. I wire-wheeled the bar that goes across the top of the battery to hold it down, and after minimizing the rust, I painted it with a special rust-blocking paint. I put anti-seize on all the screws near the battery so they would’t corrode again.

The original battery tray is a pitted mess, so I replaced it, and I am not spending $60 on a third one. I am determined to keep the acid where it belongs.

I was going to replace the hydraulic fluid, but it seemed like a stupid idea, because I wasn’t sure the tractor was okay. I thought I should run it first. While I was thinking about this, I realized I needed two filters, not the one filter I originally thought I needed, so I didn’t even have the option of replacing the fluid.

I decided to take my two-gallon jug of Tractor Supply fluid, which many people say is bad for Kubotas, and top off the system to get everything running. I think it was a good move. I can’t say whether Tractor Supply fluid is really harmful, but it won’t hurt anything if I use a little to keep the tractor working while I check it out and wait for a second filter.

A fluid change for this machine is pretty cheap. Only around $500, depending on which fluid and filters you use. Chicken feed.

Glad I won’t have to do it again for 200 hours.

I can see why a lot of people never change their hydraulic fluid. If you use a machine for work, you could put in a thousand or more hours per year, so $2500 per year for a compact Kubota and much more for something like a backhoe.

I’m not thrilled with the dealership that fixed the tractor. It came back with an empty tank, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t empty when I sent it. They took a very long time to fix it, and they charged me for things that were not mentioned in the estimate. Could be worse, though. A local diesel place charged him almost $100 for a small hose Mercedes sells for $20, and then they charged him over $14 for hazardous waste disposal. Man, that hose must have been dangerous.

I had a fantastic day working on the tractor, but the joy is blunted by the knowledge that I can’t use it for anything until I make brush forks. The old ones are awful, and they don’t fit the quick attach adaptor. I have to get a new plate that fits the adaptor, and then I have to cut it up and weld the old forks to it. Another couple of hundred dollars. On the plus side, I’ll be doing it myself instead of relying on people who keep telling me it will be done by the end of the week. Every week.

One thing I hated about my old forks was that they moved around all the time. They could not be made to stay rigid, so impacts from things I hit turned them this way and that, and I had to get off the tractor over and over to line them back up. Now that I want to make a new attachment with forks, I’m concerned that rigid forks will send all that torque back to the bucket and cause problems with the hydraulic cylinders.

I guess that won’t happen. The bucket itself has hit a lot of things, and the cylinders are fine. I suppose I could rig up shear pins, but it’s probably unnecessary.

I looked into buying steel for new shop shelves. The quote was $350. That’s around $150 more than I hoped, but even though steel prices are dropping, steel is a lot higher than it used to be. Perhaps that will change now that the recession is picking up momentum. Once China’s real estate collapse finally breaks through the measures the CCP has taken to hide it, steel should be very cheap indeed. As should copper.

Seems like God is making things easier and easier for me. Things I couldn’t do before get done. Hope it continues and increases.