Grading HELP!- How to remove my 60" blade from 3 pt hitch?

[pjwbx2230]

HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

In my ongoing battle to become marginally facile at being able to use my bx2230, I am attempting to get it ready for spring myself. Dealer offered to come help but have to be on his time and with my schedule cannot wait around most of a day for him to show up. As posted last night, got the MMM mounted properly last night. Today, was trying to get rear blade off of three point to mount the rear bagger. Have not been able to do so. Removed all pins and tried numerous methods. Easily remove the top link, but cannot get the left and right "arms" off of the pins on the blade (tight fit, not much play). Can someone please give me some advice so I do not have to wait for five hours for my dealer? My grass is getting long and the wife is going to get angry. Thanks in advance.

 

[automech]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

did you loosen the turnbuckles that hold the lower arms together? That's what they do, they hold the arms in toward the load, and keep the load from swinging around behind you.

 

[simonmeridew]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

pj:
It will come off, new tight joints come apart a little hard, but they will separate.
On the whole, you need to have the implement centered and on level ground to take it off. Then take the pins out of the ends of the blade hitch rods, and with a 2 X 4 pound the lift arms outward. The tractor lift arms may have a stabilizer strut which you can loosen up to give you more swing to the arms. On my 55 year old Ford 8N the balls are so loose that I just need to kick the arms outward and off they come. With the new tractor, they're tight and need a little "persuasion". The key for you will be loosening the stabilizer straps and use a 2 X 4.
simonmeridew

 

[pjwbx2230]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

automech and simon,
Thanks for the helpful advice. Will try this tomorrow evening and post to let you know how it works out. Was nervous about pounding on things, etc. As posted before, I have had a tendency to break things if they don't come easy. I am trying to moderate my "bull in a china shop" mentality.

 

[Volfandt]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

To add to what was said, one of the two nuts on the turnbuckles is the lock nut, break it loose and the other nut should easily turn allowing you to adj the turnbuckles out. You may have to adj them all the way out inorder to get enough clearance to clear the pins. Depending upon how wide your blades 3PH mount is, you may have to take one side off at a time, using alittle wiggle to the blade.
Sometimes the best way to get familuare with something is to just dive right on into it. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Good luck
Volfandt

 

[cp1969]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

Don't have my L3000 in front of me to double check, but if I remember correctly, the turnbuckles pull the lift arms out, not in. If that is the case, you should only have to break them loose to put on an implement, not take one off. At least for an implement in which the pins face out.

If you're having trouble getting the lift arms off the pins, there must still be weight on them

 

[proudestmonkey]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

pj

You and I are in pretty familiar territory, both of us recently bought a BX2230, both new to it, and both a little fearful of being too rough. I had the same trouble trying to take off my ballast box last weekend. My brother suggested taking all the weight out. I insisted that if that were necessary every time I wanted to take it off, I'd be really disappointed in Kubota (its also a Kubota ballast box). If you read the manual section on attaching/detaching 3pt hitch implements, you'll quickly learn that the section is mislabled because there is not a word about detaching implements. So, what I did was try to follow the attachment directions in reverse. Starting with the feedback rod (vertical attachment from the right arm going up, big brassy looking thing, can't miss it). My dealer had the lock nut so tight, I had to go buy a bigger crescent wrench just to get leverage, then we used a pipe to crank even more leverage on it. Finally, it budged, then we loosened the "chains" (that's what the manual calls them) on the inside of each arm until they were loose, which gives the arms the necessary leeway to move horizontally outward away from the pins on the attachment. After trying all the normal ways to pull something apart, my brother sat on his behind, pressed his feet up against the ballast box, and grabbed an arm with both and hands and used all his weight and pulled one arm out, once we got that out, we jiggled the beast until the other arm came out. I hate to admit it, but the whole process took us over an hour. Now that I know what to do, and that it can be done, the second time we did it (just so I'd remember what to do), it took less than 10 minutes.

Like others have said again and again on this forum, I think we also had trouble removing the thing because we are on gravel. Next time, I will surely do this on my concrete garage apron.

I was pretty frustrated that something so easy seemed to be so hard. It turned out that it would have been way way way easier if the dealer hadn't put so much torque on the feedback rod (which held the right arm just tight enough that we couldn't budge either arm enough until we got the feedback rod loose). Now that I used normal human torque, its a cinch.

Keep sharing your frustrations here, seriously. It helps those of us who are just as new feel like we have a place to go for help.

And to all of you who've responded, I am glad you are here for those of us who have what might seem to you like silly questions. Last week, I was very close to submitting a post much like pj's.

 

[AMR]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

I find the easiest way to get stuff on and off is to drop the implements on dollies, TSC has 1080 pound capacity dollies for $20/ea. So my spreader, bagger, blade, rake etc. sit on dollies, you can easily move them around as needed to get things on and off. One of my turnbuckles turns too hard to loosen it by hand so generally I only loosen one side, slide it on the implement then slide the implement over on the dolly to get the other side on.

My question regarding this subject is, how do you "center" the implement to be sure the PTO shaft is aligned?

 

[cp1969]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

You center it using the turnbuckles.

Also, can you give a link to the dollies at TSC? I can find them on their website.

 

[pjwbx2230]

Re: HELP!- How to remove my 60\" blade from 3 pt hitch?

Thanks for all of the kind responses- and for putting up with a novice. Glad to know there are others experiencing similar problems. Update- got the blade off and the bagger on. Had a friend come to help me install the bagger. Unfortunately- grass is to wet to cut right now. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif. Thanks again for the help- and I am slowly learning. BTW- upon removing the rear blade, I realized I had the tractor blocked in- need to a) buy a dolly, or b) rememjber to back into the garage next time. In any event picked the sucker up and moved it across the garage myself. Hence, the fear of breaking stuff by exerting too much force. Not as young as I used to be but guess I got it when I need it. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif