Kubota L6060 Engine failure

[deezler]

10 thousand dollars for 4 injectors installed.... jesus christ. Sorry you had to swallow that one.

ECU as common denominator... interesting. I am struggling to understand what aspect of fuel control the ECU could incorrectly instruct that would lead to mechanical failures, though. The mechanical aspects of the injectors should be able to handle whatever physical pressures and duty cycles the ECU can command. I think.

 

[Muhammad]

Sad and unfortunate to read this outcome. Nobody expects a six year old tractor with 2,400 hours to need a $10,000 engine repair and not only that, one with no explanation. The actual engine block itself is about $7,500 IIRC from another member who had to replace his for a different reason. Especially when you factor in the customer has multiple Kubota products, I really hope Kubota steps up and offers some goodwill on this. If not, it's a very bad look for the brand IMO.

 

[Rdrcr]

^^^^
Many times agreed. I will take the outcome of this situation into consideration on future purchases.

Mike

 

[chevyman29]

Just being completely honest hear but had I read this before I purchased my 4060 I probably would've sucked it up and paid the extra for another jd.

Not that it's any guarantee they're any better. But I have had good service from the 2 I've owned.

 

[MHarryE]

Injectors I can understand because the life you got is at the lower end of what I recall for ours. Losing an ECU and high pressure pump at the same time unusual. However this winter the #1 diesel I’ve been running seems to be worse than in past as measured by fuel economy. That’s tough on the pump and injectors. Of course your fuel. Comes from different refineries than my source. But I remember many years ago hearing from a supplier about changes in fuel and the effect on injector life. I asked the personal question - how will it affect my Kubota? He said Japanese, their fuel is like kerosene, tough on injection system so Japanese design for it.

As to older equipment - I bought my 1680 Case IH combine used. The previous owner gave me the stack of major repair orders completed by the dealer. First major hit was replacing the FIP on the 8.3 Cummins at 800 hours for a $5,000 hit. Third season and Case IH didn’t give him help - it’s an old pre-emissions 1992 model.

 

[Username Taken]

Since Kubota has moved their central operations to the Dallas, Texas area, we have personally noticed a marked decrease in customer relations quality.

Don't know about my dealer's relationship but our personal relationship has went downhill. They have repeatedly 'lost' the payment on the new side by side my wife bought and assessed a late charge (which she won't pay anyway) and you call them and get put on hold forever or they disconnect the call.

Been a Kubota owner / customer for over 25 years and when they were outside Columbus, Ohio (Grove City), customer relations was top notch. Not now.

The bigger they get the more the quality of customer service slides.

My Wife handles all the bills as well.

We found out a long time ago, it's best to use the electronic funds transfer (?) available on your computer. Hit a button..... Paid. Can't lose it and if they do, we have an electronic copy. And it's often free. No postage, no envelopes, no post man t worry about....

Mail-in payments are almost always handled by a 3rd party processing center that probably handles ten other (or more) Banks, Loans, at the same time. The check is read by a computer and it it has trouble, it kicks it out to be hand-read. And sometimes, the wrong people get your payment. The processing center might send it to the machine that handles Ford or Deere or God-Knows-Who. It's just a PO Box and probably in the same building as twenty others.

It's not for everybody and those that don't want to bother setting it up, I can understand

 

[crazyal]

Are the injectors mechanical or electronic? I'm assuming electronic if they suspect the ECU somehow damaging them. I would think that something like a faulty regulator in the alternator could cause something like this (voltage spike) but the ECU? If this was a common problem I'm sure we would have heard others having issues. Too bad you didn't have KTAC to cover it. I think getting anything from Kubota is going to be hard. You've already paid, it's well out of warranty, and with COVID a lot of companies are not running the way they should.

 

[MHarryE]

Are the injectors mechanical or electronic? I'm assuming electronic if they suspect the ECU somehow damaging them. I would think that something like a faulty regulator in the alternator could cause something like this (voltage spike) but the ECU? If this was a common problem I'm sure we would have heard others having issues. Too bad you didn't have KTAC to cover it. I think getting anything from Kubota is going to be hard. You've already paid, it's well out of warranty, and with COVID a lot of companies are not running the way they should.

It’s a common rail system, electronic control, and the most common failure is wear. I was involved field evaluating machines for a different company and despite an early start, we missed our release for production date by 6 months with the primary problem being injector life. They would wear to the point they leaked so much the high pressure pump couldn’t build enough pressure during cranking to reach the point where the electronics would signal injection. Symptoms were running fine one day, shut off and unable to start the next day. Engine Division kept supplying me more injectors that I immediately sent to my test fleet as they failed. Working with our filter supplier, we developed a super filter but unfortunately we couldn’t change the filter head so customers would change using a will-fit filter and in production, I fielded complaints of changing filter and a week later won’t start. Send me a picture of the filter. Always a cheaper filter. The clearances needed to produce the fine fuel particles that burn clean, and efficiently, are a whole different world. It will be interesting to see what Kubota finds here. Engine Division kept sending me injectors so I didn’t need to buy them from my account. I only paid mechanic time to replace so I had no idea what they cost. I have failed injectors sitting at home in my failure collection and had no clue service parts list on them would be $1200 each. Special ceramic coatings to resist wear, self diagnosis and fine tuning, very precision piece of hardware.

 

[goeduck]

We found out a long time ago, it's best to use the electronic funds transfer (?) available on your computer. Hit a button..... Paid. Can't lose it and if they do, we have an electronic copy. And it's often free. No postage, no envelopes, no post man t worry about....

I pay most everything on line, rarely do I write a check. If the place does not have an online link I call to see if they will take a cc over the phone.

 

[AKForest]

I have had many helpful comments from people on this site. Thank you all. Here is the latest information. The fuel tests came back clean. The injector tests came back with all four injectors "stuck closed". The solenoid controlling the injector pump tested as working properly. However, the pump was producing no output. It had failed. Finally, it was discovered that the ECU had failed. All three failed simultaneously. Neither the dealership nor Kubota can give me any explanation as to how or why this could happen. The only explanation that I have heard that made any sense was that the ECU failed in a catastrophic way that took out the pump and injectors with it. The ECU is the only common denominator in this failure. i controls the flow of fuel to the pump, the pressure in the rail by modulating the injector pump solenoid, and controls the timing and opening and closing of the injectors.

Kubota has decided not to assume any responsibility for this failure.

For those of you that own a L6060, I hope for your sake that this was a fluke occurrence and it won't happen to you. Imagine the damage that could occur if the ECU decided to fail in a way that opened an injector when a piston was in the wrong position.

For those of you considering buying an L6060, be warned. This was a $10,027.09 bad experience for me.