Comparison Kubota L3301 vs L3800

[motownbrowne]

Unless you will be using a box blade or other grading device as a great portion of your tractor use, jump on that l3800 before it's gone.

For me it's a simple choice, more HP, less computer junk to fail, and a cheaper price tag.

 

[Scott65]

Why does the box blade make the difference? You mean because of the jumpy hitch?

 

[s219]

Why does the box blade make the difference? You mean because of the jumpy hitch?

That is surely what he meant, but it hasn't been an issue for me so far and I do quite a bit of box blade work. It could be an issue if you need to slowly/gradually lift a box. I tend to feather off my grading work as material runs out or with adjustments to the top link, so I almost never need to raise the box slowly.

 

[Scott65]

I need to research this some more. Since this is my first tractor, I have no box blade experience. I just bought a small piece of property with about a 1000' road that has some rutted, low spots. As dry as it is, its hard as nails right now. I don't have much money so I can't really afford to bring in the road base material that I would prefer to use to fill this in and grade it. So I've been told that a box blade is my best bet for trying to smooth this out. The FEL kind of tries to skim the tops of the ruts, but just bounces off of the deeper stuff.

 

[motownbrowne]

A box blade will be helpful for your road maintenance. Or a grader scraper. Even a simple back blade will work. Best option would be to have all three, but obviously that's a lot of $$.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that the potentially "jerky" 3pt would prevent you from effectively using that type of stuff. You should be able to make it work just fine, and the addition of a hydraulic top-link would be a great way to solve any problem you run into with feathering the lift.

 

[Scott65]

I will look into all of that, thanks! Honestly, I'll have to google the terms to know what they are, haha. I'm VERY new to this stuff. I'm a city boy. I like to tinker and build stuff. I think it would be neat to create a 3 point hitch and hydraulically driven pto hookup for the front quick attach and build these implements to go on the front. I say "create", but I know alot of this has probably been done by many before me. My thoughts are to basically build a pivoting box blade to go in place of the FEL. Then you have tilt for different drag and push angles, and left to right pivot adjustment to move material away from walls/into ruts, whatever. And sides to trap excess material.

And the pto and 3 point attachment points will be for future hookup of a front mounted bush hog, rotary tiller, etc. Since I'm new to this, I could be way off track, but it seems to me that you have way more control, and definately more comfort by putting your implements up front, rather than behind you. Plus with the FEL arms, you've already got alot more adjustability and range of motion to start with than the 3 point arms on the back

 

[s219]

The problem with ground engaging implements is that most will bend your front loader arms under extreme use, whereas the rear 3-pt setup is a lot less fragile and is setup for ground engaging work. It has short heavy gauge links that are made to be in tension when pulling a ground engaging implement. If you hit an obstacle you'll either kill the engine, hit a relief on an HST, or just spin the tires. In contrast, the front loader is a lot more complicated and it's engineered to lift, no to push. Yes, you can do quite a bit with the front loader but those long skinny-gauge arms, all the links and pins, and the cylinders make it a whole lot less robust than the 3-pt, and plenty of people find this out the hard way. There are dozens/hundreds of threads on here from people who have messed up their front loader doing something they shouldn't have.

If I do any pushing with my front loader, it's generally using the hydraulics only, since they should go into relief before any structure starts to bend or break. I do limited ground engaging work only when in soft soil.

Really, look at the difference between a tractor's front loader arms and the arms on a bulldozer to get an idea of why each has a specific design.

 

[Scott65]

You've crushed my dreams...

Just kidding. That is a very good point. Hopefully at some point I can afford the top filler material, and maybe even a pro to come in and level it. Then my inventions will only be needed to gently maintain, not actually dig in and sculpt.

 

[s219]

You can do some very aggressive shaping with a box blade, especially with rippers down. I wouldn't rule it out. When we were building our new house, I had to re-do the driveway every couple weeks until it got established and setup in drier weather. Before and after any cement truck deliveries, I would knock down high spots and fill in ruts. The more uniform the material, the easier it is, as the box will take material off high spots and drop it into low spots. If the material is really mixed up, it gets more challenging.

 

[tractorshopper]

I probably use my box blade with my L3800 more than any other implement and nearly always have it on as my first choice for rear ballast anyway (it weighs 550 lbs). I maintain our neighborhood's gravel road. If I purposely try to very slowly raise the 3PT, I do get some jerk especially when it is just warming up, but it is certainly very manageable and I have been able to easily shape and sculpt property as well as the road. Most of the time on the road, I simply drop the box with the rippers in the highest setting, but just slightly below the blade and keep it level. It easily breaks up the hard pack and fills and I feather as I go. I drag it so the lower parts fill in naturally with the shape of the blade being level. 2 passes on our road and all is well again. It is really a narrow lane so 2 passes on each side of the crown is all it every takes. This tractor will easily pull my 6ft BB full up the hills in 4X4 M range.