Surfran,
Great pictures. I’ll add a few cents of my own. As I mentioned in the “Transporting a BX22” thread I did take some pictures of the chute mechanism and make some comments in the "Describe the grass collection system" thread. My apologies if I duplicate those comments here.
First off, a little background. I grew up running my grandfather’s (later my father’s) Simplicity rig that had a blower that was powered by a belt “PTO” (for lack of a better term) and my great-grandfathers IH Cub Cadet that had a blower powered by a separate gas engine. Both hung off the back of the tractor and blew the leaves into a tow behind trailer. Both trailers articulated like one expects a trailer to, not like the JD things with casters.
When I bought my BX2200 with 54” deck I wanted a system that was powered off the tractor and not a separate engine. 1) I really didn’t like the added noise of another engine. 2) I didn’t want yet another small gas engine to maintain. 3) I’m not going to get a tiller soon and wanted to put that rear PTO to good use! I considered the Trac-Vac, Model 854-BX I believe, a PTO driven blower that fires the leaves into a trailer, and of course the Kubota bagger. My dealer (Russ Ruh at DeKane equipment (www.dekane.com), great person and shop by the way, Russ sells giant Case machines worth as much as my house, and I only go to the shop once or twice a year, yet he knows me by name and always has time to chat with someone who only bought a baby ‘Bota), carries both, but had never sold either one so really couldn’t give me honest input.
I decided to go with the Kubota bagger because I knew it would definitely fit the tractor and takes up considerably less space than having a dedicated grass collecting trailer. I don’t know of anyone on TBN with the Trac-Vac PTO driven rig on their BX.
I picked it up from Russ in the box and put it together myself. Easy assembly as all the difficult stuff is pre-assembled in the gearbox / blower unit. Probably took me two hours, going slow.
I was a little dismayed that you need to take the lift brackets off the 3pt lift arms, but when you think about it, since the mower and the 3pt mechanism use the same lift hydro there really isn’t another way to do it. Wait, before I get flames on that I do recall someone on TBN that built a really slick quick hitch type mechanism for their BX bagger. Getting the thing on is a bear, I wrestled with it a while before I came to the (erroneous) conclusion that something was not sized right. I called Russ and he sent out his head mechanic the next day to have a look see. Tractor newbe that I was, his mechanic explained that 3pt hitch implements are not the micro tolerance machines that I might think they are. They often take a mallet whack, drift pin, and foul language to get on. Using all three, he and I were able to wrestle the thing on.
Now that I have practice and know what to expect it is decidedly much easier, although I do use my floor jack to hoist the thing up while I get the top link in place. That’s right, you don’t use the top link itself, instead the bagger has its own “top link” built in that you wrestle into the top link bracket. My apologies to 3pt nomenclature “purists”, after three years of TBN benefiting from the experience of tractor masters, I fear I am still a newbe, so I’m calling the 3pt parts what I THINK they are called, not necessarily WHAT they are called. It probably takes me 10 minutes to put on and 5 to take off. Most of that time is spent removing and attaching the 3pt lift brackets. Kubota does give you some “key ring” pin restrainers to replace the cotters in the pins that have them so this task is not really that difficult.
So, on to the review, those of you who read Fine Homebuilding probably knew to skip to this part and avoid my ranting…
What I like:
1) It is fairly compact and stores very nicely. Those little stand arms that drop down are brilliant.
2) Short 8” take up hose. The Simplicity and Cub rigs I trained on had long 6” take up hoses. I’ve only clogged the thing a couple of times, doing things that I really knew better than to do.
3) Well built. It’s heavy for a reason. Although I hope those bags last.
4) It really works well and sucks up anything. Have some extra shear pins on hand if you do like I did and take it places you know better than to.
5) It is pretty easy (and quick) to empty (see caveat below).
6) It makes a cool jet engine like noise when you flip it on and crank up the throttle!
What I don’t like:
1) It fills up fast. If you’ve got a pile, those three bags don’t seem to go very far.
2) You have to dismount to empty the thing. Although it is pretty simple to pop and dump the three bags, I recall seeing a JD rig that has a hydro dump to it. Maybe a BX22-er with that rear hydro and welder can craft a solution to this. It’ll give me an excuse to put a rear hydro on my 2200.
3) I hope those bags last…
The don’t likes being said, in the two years (yep, the first year I hand raked!) I have had it, my rake has not come off my garage wall…
End of rant…
-- Rock
Great pictures. I’ll add a few cents of my own. As I mentioned in the “Transporting a BX22” thread I did take some pictures of the chute mechanism and make some comments in the "Describe the grass collection system" thread. My apologies if I duplicate those comments here.
First off, a little background. I grew up running my grandfather’s (later my father’s) Simplicity rig that had a blower that was powered by a belt “PTO” (for lack of a better term) and my great-grandfathers IH Cub Cadet that had a blower powered by a separate gas engine. Both hung off the back of the tractor and blew the leaves into a tow behind trailer. Both trailers articulated like one expects a trailer to, not like the JD things with casters.
When I bought my BX2200 with 54” deck I wanted a system that was powered off the tractor and not a separate engine. 1) I really didn’t like the added noise of another engine. 2) I didn’t want yet another small gas engine to maintain. 3) I’m not going to get a tiller soon and wanted to put that rear PTO to good use! I considered the Trac-Vac, Model 854-BX I believe, a PTO driven blower that fires the leaves into a trailer, and of course the Kubota bagger. My dealer (Russ Ruh at DeKane equipment (www.dekane.com), great person and shop by the way, Russ sells giant Case machines worth as much as my house, and I only go to the shop once or twice a year, yet he knows me by name and always has time to chat with someone who only bought a baby ‘Bota), carries both, but had never sold either one so really couldn’t give me honest input.
I decided to go with the Kubota bagger because I knew it would definitely fit the tractor and takes up considerably less space than having a dedicated grass collecting trailer. I don’t know of anyone on TBN with the Trac-Vac PTO driven rig on their BX.
I picked it up from Russ in the box and put it together myself. Easy assembly as all the difficult stuff is pre-assembled in the gearbox / blower unit. Probably took me two hours, going slow.
I was a little dismayed that you need to take the lift brackets off the 3pt lift arms, but when you think about it, since the mower and the 3pt mechanism use the same lift hydro there really isn’t another way to do it. Wait, before I get flames on that I do recall someone on TBN that built a really slick quick hitch type mechanism for their BX bagger. Getting the thing on is a bear, I wrestled with it a while before I came to the (erroneous) conclusion that something was not sized right. I called Russ and he sent out his head mechanic the next day to have a look see. Tractor newbe that I was, his mechanic explained that 3pt hitch implements are not the micro tolerance machines that I might think they are. They often take a mallet whack, drift pin, and foul language to get on. Using all three, he and I were able to wrestle the thing on.
Now that I have practice and know what to expect it is decidedly much easier, although I do use my floor jack to hoist the thing up while I get the top link in place. That’s right, you don’t use the top link itself, instead the bagger has its own “top link” built in that you wrestle into the top link bracket. My apologies to 3pt nomenclature “purists”, after three years of TBN benefiting from the experience of tractor masters, I fear I am still a newbe, so I’m calling the 3pt parts what I THINK they are called, not necessarily WHAT they are called. It probably takes me 10 minutes to put on and 5 to take off. Most of that time is spent removing and attaching the 3pt lift brackets. Kubota does give you some “key ring” pin restrainers to replace the cotters in the pins that have them so this task is not really that difficult.
So, on to the review, those of you who read Fine Homebuilding probably knew to skip to this part and avoid my ranting…
What I like:
1) It is fairly compact and stores very nicely. Those little stand arms that drop down are brilliant.
2) Short 8” take up hose. The Simplicity and Cub rigs I trained on had long 6” take up hoses. I’ve only clogged the thing a couple of times, doing things that I really knew better than to do.
3) Well built. It’s heavy for a reason. Although I hope those bags last.
4) It really works well and sucks up anything. Have some extra shear pins on hand if you do like I did and take it places you know better than to.
5) It is pretty easy (and quick) to empty (see caveat below).
6) It makes a cool jet engine like noise when you flip it on and crank up the throttle!
What I don’t like:
1) It fills up fast. If you’ve got a pile, those three bags don’t seem to go very far.
2) You have to dismount to empty the thing. Although it is pretty simple to pop and dump the three bags, I recall seeing a JD rig that has a hydro dump to it. Maybe a BX22-er with that rear hydro and welder can craft a solution to this. It’ll give me an excuse to put a rear hydro on my 2200.
3) I hope those bags last…
The don’t likes being said, in the two years (yep, the first year I hand raked!) I have had it, my rake has not come off my garage wall…
End of rant…
-- Rock
