My (hopefully not ill advised) foray to the dark side...

[Car Doc]

Now that is a small tractor the 4wd, loader and wheel weights makes it worthy in my book!

Heck its got to need something from the looks of it and I bet it put out for all it was worth for a little guy!

So hopefully you can make some money and make some garden nut happy that thing is almost cute nah handy is better description! :thumbsup:

 

[284 International]

Car Doc, you pretty much said my exact thoughts. This is as cute a little tractor as I've ever seen, I really like the way it sits. It seems to be all tire and engine. Never mind that they're tiny, it's a tough little machine. If it ever stops raining long enough to do any work today, I'm going to pull the knuckle apart and see what's going on inside.

It really is cute, though. It will fit through a reasonably large doorway, or virtually any gate. It probably won't do the work of the 1401D, but it will beat the dickens out of a wheelbarrow and shovel, and is nearly as small! :laughing: Hopefully somebody will want it once it's moderately fixed up.

 

[Car Doc]

That fact it will get thru a gate will go a long ways getting it sold and being so low it will fit under stuff is nice also!

I remember a guy I knew a long time back wanted a basement under his A- frame cabin and hired a company that had really small skid steers and they just drove under it and dug it all out for him this little guy reminds me of that.

 

[SixHoeBob]

Front axles on 4wd tractors tend to do the larger portion of the work, even though they are the weaker of the two axles. I would remove the front weights, because the tractor has a loader for front ballast. When you need additional weight, fill the bucket half full of dirt. These were my thoughts before I read that there were front axle issues.

 

[deepNdirt]

Reminds me of the days we were little boys trying to ride our Tonka Trucks,
shoveling in the sand with the hand operated loader bucket :thumbsup:
Not much has changed since then, only now we have real running engines to take place of our verumm verumm engine sounds we used to make
I've been working on fixing up a little yard tractor, and for some reason I am just about as proud of it as I am my Ym 1700 in fact I even painted it Red if I had a chance at scoring a SCUT like that kubota I'd sure grab it up,

 

[California]

My (hopefully not ill advised) foray to the dark side...

Heck Kubota isn't the Dark Side. I saw that and thought you bought a Russian tractor or something. Maybe even Chinese although I couldn't imagine you doing that.

Nothing wrong with a Kubota. They are equal competitors to Yanmar regarding build quality. They just have a different marketing model, top-down from Authorized Dealers, instead of common knowledge shared among DIY Yanmar owners on here. In fact TBN was founded by Kubota owners who wanted to talk to one another. The only difference is I think nearly all of them bought new, instead of 30 years old like us. Enjoy that thing after you get it sorted out!

Long ago, 1974, I rented a tiny 4x4 Kubota one weekend then a tiny 2x4 Yanmar the next weekend to finish the project. (I cut a steep suburban backyard into flat terraces because it was too steep to mow). The 2x4 Yanmar must have been ballasted better or something. I clearly felt it outworked the 4x4 Kubota and they were the same size. I loosened nearly dry dirt with rear rippers and scraper, then carried the waste dirt a couple hundred feet with the loader. Both tractors went through the garden gate so they must have been as small as yours. Hard working, just at miniature scale.

 

[284 International]

Deepndirt, you and I think alike. This really is a step up from my Tonka skiploader. I wish I could find an absurdly cheaply priced Yanmar crawler dumper tractor to play with too!

California, I remember reading you relating that story before, but I don't recall where. I'm going to be impressed with this little guy, and may have a tough time letting it go. I've noticed that, as you said, the Kubota crew isn't as into DIY stuff as the Yanmar side of things are. Their advice centers around "Find a good dealer..." My inclination is to find a set of diagrams, then rip it all apart myself and see if I can fix it. This thing is older than I am, I'm sure, so any mechanic at a dealership isn't going to have much experience with them anyway. Yanmar people, it seems, tend to work on things themselves first, then call professionals in to attempt to clean up the mess....

I wanted to share the little bit I saw about this thing, though. It's the first Kubota I've ever messed with, and, as I said, some things are very well designed, and others are very poor. I don't see anything here to justify their rise to dominance in the marketplace compared to my Yanmars or the Mitsubishi the girlfriend got. Perhaps the others are different. I"m not trying to start a war, I just found it interesting and wanted to share.

 

[clemsonfor]

whats the HP on that thing, or did i miss it?

 

[deepNdirt]

The TBN is by far the best and most informative " Tractor website " on the net, but before I joined up here I used to be a member of another website,
You see! I too was an orange tractor owner, I had an L-series 140 it was a CUT 1 cyl. diesel that I restored, No one could ever tell me the year make, the person whom I purchased it fro 12-13 years ago told me he thought it was a '49 but ran like a new one and could hold its own for its size and age:thumbsup: It is when I got a FEL to install onto it and soon realize the loader was much too large for that tractor, Rather than getting a smaller FEL I chose to get a larger tractor, and is now where I am today with my My-1700, I wish I could have afford to hold onto the Ol-bota. quite a lot of seat time on that little dude, but I really had no use for 2 tractor's on my size property,
If you cannot find info you need here on TBN, go check these folks out, They are into restoring older Kubota's and might could be of some help locating used parts:thumbsup:
OrangeTractorTalks - Everything Kubota - Powered by vBulletin
incidentally here is a photo of my old L-140

 

[284 International]

Clemson, 11hp at the PTO is what the plate said.

DeepnDirt, that's a nice looking machine! How did it work for you, was the single cylinder rough, or loud? I'll check out that other forum. Thanks for the lead.