Attached are a couple of photos of the quick coupler on my
L45. As you can see from the tag it looks like the coupler on the
L45 is the same as that on the
M59 made by a Canadian company called H&H. They manufacture the
L45 buckets also as all of mine have H&H tags too. I have spoken to H&H directly to see about other offerings for the
L45 and they tell me they can only sell these buckets to Kubota which explains the exorbidant pricing. A buddy of mine has H&H buckets on his Cat 420D and his Volvo excavator so they make a broad range of products.
As MBradey points out the bolt on the
L45 is a PIA. You have to tighten the bolt, then pound the wedge in and retighten some more. If you don't, like me, you may find yourself searching for the wedge and bolt that have worked their way loose and fallen out. I lost a couple of hours one day after several hours of loader work when I turned around to use the hoe for a while and the bucket fell off. The bolt had worked its way loose and it and the wedge had fallen out. After walking around for a while I called a friend with a metal detector and fortunately after about 45 minutes of looking I found the two of them ground into the dirt. Of course this happened on a Sunday of a long weekend but I'm sure the dealer would not have had a replacement anyway. My morning check now includes putting a wrench on that bolt and making sure it and the wedge are tight.
I preferred the
B26 setup which did not require any tools - just removal and reinsertion of a pin similar to the
L39 setup I think. I did not realize the
L39 QA was different but maybe to increase Canadian content Kubota uses H&H north of the border. It would be interesting to see if a US based
L45 user has the H&H setup or the
L39 style. Martian's 110 also appears to have the H&H type of QA but I think more than one manufacturer uses the bolt and wedge setup so it may be a different setup. If you go the Kubota QA route, I know you can by what are called "ears" that you can weld on to your own attachments. When I traded my
B21 for a
B26, I kept the
B21 24" bucket, cut the
B21 ears off it, welded a set of
B26 QA ears the
B21 bucket and then removed the
B21 teeth and I had a 24" ditching bucket for my
B26.
I have seen excavators with the Amulet QA style and on larger machines the operator does not even leave his seat to change buckets. The pins remain on the bucket and there is a small cylinder between the two "U" shaped pickup points. They push a button to retract the cylinder, unhook and then hook the new bucket with the front U, curl the bucket and then extended the cylinder to lock the bucket in place. The one thing you have to watch with a QA setup is how it the bucket sits versus the manufacturer's pin on version. Some QA setups increase the spacing of the pins which gives you a little more reach but also affects the leverage of the hoe because of the geometry change.
Regards,
Lauren
