B6000 4wd

[OldMcDonald]

I have come to know a newbie, both to Portugal and land owning. He bought about 7 acres a few months ago. A lot of olives and grapes, plus hay/grazing. He has a neighbour who appears very willing to do general cultivations with a large Ford. I have seen videos of his work (but not close enough to the tractor to identify the model) and good shots of the finished work show the neighbour is neat and tidy. He will continue to do heavy work, but as we all know you simply have to have a tractor. I mean that, I am not being facetious. There are just so many jobs where a tractor is essential, even if just carting, which is likely to be his main use - carrying his harvests of grapes and olives to a road vehicle.

He is interested in looking at a B6000 4wd. I have owned 9 different makes over the last 50 odd years around the world but never a Kubota. I will not be going with him to view the tractor. Out of my area and he needs a translator with him - somebody who at least knows tractors.

Are there any particular quirks or weak points he should be looking for? Obviously it is a very old machine and I have no idea of its use or condition, but since this is THE place to ask about Kubota tractors I said I would ask for him. One thing I noted in an overview link he gave me is that the pto runs counter-clockwise. I have never come across this before. Any comments?

 

[ptsg]

They are very solid machines. I had a B7000 before for around 20 years without any problem whatsoever, just the regular stuff that gets aged over time like seals, hoses and stuff like that.

Unless your friend pretends to have the original Kubota tiller attached all the time, the B6000 should do the trick. But if he plans to buy the 3 point linkage kit to use another implements like mowers or even a 3 PT tiller, I would stay away from the B6000 exactly because of the counter clockwise PTO rotation.

The B6000 requires a very hard to find Kubota tiller that has the built-in PTO drive and it's ready for the counter clockwise rotation. This is very hard to find here in Portugal.

 

[ptsg]

Another thing I remember, is that if your friend plans on driving it on the public roads, tractors here need to have a license plate and be insured.

Now this older grey market Kubotas can't get a license plate anymore because they changed the why they did it. The fewer that have license plates, where done back in the day where it was easier to do it. If you see one with a license plate for sale, you'll realize immediately that it has a much higher price than the non licensed ones.

Also, most people aren't really informed much on these grey market tractors and the sellers often try to bump the HP of the tractors from 5 to 10HP more, which is not true and fully recommend to check TractorData to confirm the HP, I believe it's around 14 HP for the B6000.

I hope you've been enjoying living on this beautiful country. It's does have it's quirks but all in all it's a good country.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Thanks for your replies. I have been here 17 years and have a "working farm" quinta near Castelo Branco - mainly olives. Livestock have been disposed of for a while because a heart and old age related problems mean I need to sell Old Mcdonald's Farm

I have already warned him about grey market tractors. I know somebody else who bought one and he cannot get green diesel so has to pay full price. An expensive problem over a few years.

All I know about the tractor is that it was claimed to be 14hp and has a rotavator (tiller) and a trailer. I had already checked TractorData before posting here and it says 10.9hp. The rotavator would have to be the original I suppose, but obviously essential to make sure it is part of the tractor, and not one the present owner bought and cannot use. No mention of a tpl so a link box could not be used - I have always found a box to be much more use than a trailer. A 600cc engine cannot pull a lot in a trailer on wet ground. At the same time the weight of the tractor is not enough to carry much weight in a tpl box. Is the trailer also driven off the pto the same way as 2 wheeled tractors in Portugal?

 

[ptsg]

I agree with you on the link box. It's much more versatile than a trailer, even if you have to take one more trip to haul something. By now, I'm sure you've realized that the link box it's about the most used tractor attachment here.

On 2 wheeled tractors, yes, they use the PTO to power the trailer, which has a 4 or 5 speed gearbox and a diff. This makes it only a rear wheel drive. I'm sure if one plays with the gears on tractor and trailer, can fun a close match in speed to get out of that tricky spot.

On conventional 4WD tractors, it's a bit more complex. You'll find that European tractors will have a lever for the PTO that changes between Engine powered PTO and ground speed PTO. These tractors use bigger trailers than the 2 wheeled ones, but it does have a simple gearbox where you change the gear set to match your tractor so you can just use the tractor's gears. Your TCE45 should have that feature.

Japanese, Korean or Chinese tractors don't come with this feature.

Back to the B6000, there many small tractors like these pretty much everywhere. Personally I would stay away from the B6000 just because of the PTO rotation issue. But there are several B7000, B7001, B7100 out there with slightly more HP and without the PTO issue. The B7001 and B7100 have a 3 cylinder 16 HP engine. Even other brands like Iseki, Mitsubishi, Shibaura, Yanmar. All very similar tractors. Some of the Yanmar ones, have a very nice power shuttle transmission.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Thanks for your reply again. Just to save you some effort with any more posts you might make to me - I have farmed all my life and am 76 next Monday. I have owned 5 places in 4 different countries, England, Australia, Scotland and Portugal in that order. I have owned up to over 3000 acres (and share farmed another 2000 at the same time) so have a lot of experience of tractors and farm machinery and equipment. I came here 17 years ago for semi retirement. I posted because I have no knowledge or experience of Kubota tractors.

I probably did not make a very good job of putting that in a way that means I am extremely grateful to you for taking your time to reply. I just felt that you were not aware I am a farmer.

As it happens I have had the grey market (Shibaura) tractor I mentioned for about 3 years. It is here for safe keeping whilst the owner is working overseas and I have my sprayer permanently attached to it. That is the arrangement - I store a lot of stuff for him and get to do my spraying with his tractor. The sprayer is in use frequently throughout the year and I had been thinking of buying something small myself to be dedicated to the sprayer when the owner offered the deal. It is a dinky little machine, model D23F Stiger Deluxe, and I enjoy using it. Fantastic range of gears although too slow if any road work was needed and I eventually sussed out the right combination of pto speed (it is has four and I posted a thread on here originally) and gear to get the right boom application. Being so small it is also handy for lance spraying of tree foliage.

Thanks again.