Every properly installed three cylinder prime mover I have ever
been around or worked with behaves like this as it was was due
to the engines being bolted to the frame of the vehicle which
had a gas engine and had to be modified to accept this
Duetz Diesel with no rubber isolation mounts),
NO I was not responsible for that mess.
The 3 cylinder Duetz engines in our Ingersoll Rand Air Compressors
did not have these issues because they had the required rubber puck
isolation mounts.
Some machine builders simply bolt the engine to the machines,
which is what I suspect the problem is here due to the description
of the engines behavior at low idle speed. It is much less noticable
at the higher idle due to the engine speed increase.
The Duetz engines use a rubber puck with a drilled hole and steel spacer
to secure the engine mounting feet to the machines engine compartment
allowing the rubber puck to compress only as far as the steel spacer
pressed into the rubber puck used for the shock absorber.
The 3 cylinder Kubota engine is used in a lot of applications.
The Compact Utility Tractor market was simply another avenue
to sell engines and transmissions, which are shipped from
the Kubota home plant world wide, as they sell these engines
for water pumps, generators, miniature rice combines,
rice planters, stationary threshers, small construction machinery
including rollers, tampers, portable screens for gravel and sand
among other uses.
What you are describing completely is an issue of having no
engine isolation from the frame of the tractor.
(They either have a thin piece of conveyor belt between the
mounting foot of the engine and the frame
which simply aids the transmission of engine vibration
or simply nothing at all separating the engine from the tractor frame).
I will post what the engine isolation mount should be/look like
for the 3 cylinder engines when I find it shortly.
My former employers used conveyor belt because they did not want
to buy the pucks for the mounts as they felt they were not required.
All the Saulsbury fire pumps I installed were done this way and they continue
to do it that way.
leon