Increase Kubota FEL tilt

[Viny]

My brush hog has a hinged SSQA mount plate:

View attachment 655155 View attachment 655157


You could make one on your mower with the hinge pin at the bottom and a way to lock the hinge while using:

View attachment 655156

Then sell the idea to Trailblazer. :thumbsup:

Yes, that's another way to play the ssqa adapter plate. Did you make yours? Can you take another picture or two, close up, showing your pivots, etc? I'm definitely working through quite a few strategies...!

 

[Viny]

Could you hang a counter weight on the mower while you change the config. Make the counter weight so that the mower hangs at what ever angle works. Just an off the wall idea :confused3:

gg

I'm not sure where that would hang due to the configurable nature of the mower. It moves into many positions relative to it's yellow mount plate. My initial impressions are that it would be something very complicated...

 

[Xfaxman]

Yes, that's another way to play the ssqa adapter plate. Did you make yours? Can you take another picture or two, close up, showing your pivots, etc? I'm definitely working through quite a few strategies...!

Did not make it. It is made like a door hinge. The attachment plate is welded to the hinge.

One way to do what you need is it buy or make another attachment plate and hinge it at the bottom.

Pictures from Grace MFG Website:

And mine not connected, looking from the front. The attachment plate is at the back right:

 

[Viny]

Ok, here's a quick update. Based on ptsg's mention of the bucket stops, I inspected those and indeed the qa plate was hitting/stopping on them. I went ahead and cut them off and I got a fair amount of additional tilt. The qa still stops on the mount and it appears I can cut a bit more off and possibly get more travel out of the cylinders unless they bottom out. I'm not sure how I could figure that out before cutting?

I did get about 1 1/2" of additional travel out of the cylinders.

Anyway, here's a couple of pictures to show the gain. I'm reposting the original pic to show the difference. Who knows, I may get out of this without having to build something!

 

[ptsg]

It did make a difference. I don't think you'll be able to get the mower vertical by just cutting the stop though, but it's something already.

You can always measure the cylinder the way it is now, then disconnect the pin on the quick attach and extend the cylinder to see if there is any travel left in it.

The stops are there for a reason, so if the quick attach hit the stops at the same time the cylinders has no more travel, it would be golden.

 

[Viny]

I actually thought about doing that to see how much more travel. As for the travel and the stop hitting at the same time, you don't ask for much! :dance1:

 

[Viny]

I unpinned one side and lo and behold there's quite a bit more travel available. So, I spent a bit of time yesterday whittlin' on the stop mounts and recovered most of the travel. I believe I have about 1" remaining that I might be able to get. All told, I believe there's close to 4" difference from where I started this whine-fest to the now known available cylinder travel. So, to be clear, I've recovered about 3" of the 4" available.

I might have to completely remove the ssqa (temporarily) to get at the current bind spot. We'll see...

 

[ptsg]

Nice! You're getting somewhere now.

Should be getting closer to your goal now.

 

[Viny]

Just a quick update. I finally got around to putting the mower back on and attempted to adjust the configuration. By backing up the tractor onto a small incline, I was able to horse the mower around with moderate effort as it is still in a small amount of bind. So close! I guess when the time presents itself, I will go back after that remaining inch or so of travel of the hydraulic cylinders. But I think it is close enough for the time being that I can probably shelve the idea of an additional adapter or a more radical modification of the FEL. I really do appreciate all of the discussion about this with you guys! Have a great summer of tractoring!

 

[Xfaxman]

:thumbsup: Thanks for the update.