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

[clemsonfor]

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

Deep, how is the RR track mounted on the front of the kuboo?

 

[deepNdirt]

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.

International, The 1 cylinder was a smooth running engine and could tach up some torque when needed, also could be idle down to a hit and mis,
I was told it had a piston the size of a coffee can when you think of a 1-cyl engine the first thing comes to mind is a B&S lawn engine, Certainly not the case with this diesel one might think it had 30 hp. The rice tires were much better when I first got the tractor and it got great traction to be only 2-wd. it had locking diff and a strong 3-pnt lift, It truly amazed me with all the things it could do, Far beyond what one would think such a small tractor with only 1 cyl. could do,:thumbsup:

 

[deepNdirt]

Deep, how is the RR track mounted on the front of the kuboo?

Funny you should ask the R/R track wasn't actually mounted it was only strapped on with some Romax wire to hold it in place for the time I needed it, the tractor had wheel weights but wasn't quite enough when using the brush cutter, so I had to improvise by using what was suppose to be my bench-top anvil, The bumper protrude enough so that the R/R simply laid on the bumper, I just needed a way to strap in down,:thumbsup: when I sold the tractor my plans were to keep the pc of R/R ..... The deal was when selling the tractors was to let the cutter go with it,
The one pc of equipment that required extra ballast weight, when the man attempted to load the tractor & cutter onto his trailer as he got to the deck of the trailer the front-end lift up, I thought quick as i was standing on the trailer quiding him on and jumped onto the front bumper bringing it back down, when he got the tractor loaded, he ask does it do that often? my reply was only with the brush cutter, I then showed him the weight I use when using the cutter, next thing I knew he had me talked in to throwing in my pc of R/R anvil, I would rather give him the anvil than to hear of him killed on the 6:00 news from flipping over the tractor, I had that pc of R/R for 30+ years been almost 2 years now and I've still not replaced the R/R track and probably never will,
That stuff isn't as easy to come by as once was,

 

[sandman2234]

A friend of mine has a B6000 also, and I have watched him in the years past toying with his play pretty.
Some of the minor things he has done, was move the seat by making a modified bracket to allow just a little more legroom. Kind of a move it slightly backwards and upwards at the same time. Really mad a lot of difference.
As far as your Kubota "having had a reverser" on it, MAYBE, but just from pictures of these all over the 'net and my friends, is it possible that it had a tiller on it? The tiller they seemed to favor was mounted right up against the back of the housing using housing bolts and might give a thumbprint to make you think there was a reverser. Reverser's are a lot less common than the tiller. I inquired to a friend about considering making them, but not sure if the market is there for the trouble to write the programs and do the prototypes, etc.
Funny, his has a piece of railroad track on the front also...
A front end loader is in the designing stages, probably modified from a 4300 JD that I captured after a fire. A little more legroom is also being looked at, by adding a square/rectangle to the existing section that couples the front end to the rear end. Several modifications to the 3pt have come along, as different pieces have become available. The last mod was from the above listed JD, which has worked rather well. His tractor came with the tiller attached and the 3pt hitch has to be removed to install the tiller, so he didn't acquire that stuff when he purchased it.Engine horse power is said to be 13, and from most basic stuff, is very similar to the Ford 1100, as far as size and capabilities. Doubt that is another source of parts, though.
Please post pictures of the front end problems as you work through it, as that is, and hopefully remains an untouched part of my friends tractor. It would be good information to know since the addition of a FEL is good cause for the demise of the front ends, which are really lightweight to start with.
Most of the pto powered attachments my friend uses have been modified to run from normal direction to the reverse operation. Not an easy task, but so far nothing he has wanted to use has been unachievable. Making what he wants for the tractor is part of his therapy, that most of us achieve by seat time.
The charging systems and coolant systems on these tractors are a little strange to most of us, as they don't have typical alternators, and no water pumps.
David from jax

 

[284 International]

David, thank you for that feedback. When I pull the front apart I'll let you guys know about the thread I'll post in the Kubota forum.

I think it had something else on it because there is some bracketry around the PTO output that doesn't look necessary to mount the tiller, and it has an adapter to take it to a 6 spline 1 3/8 output, which is obviously an American market aftermarket addition. I wasn't meaning to take a picture of that part of it, but you can kind of see it in this picture: B6000 :: B6000rear.jpg picture by International284 - Photobucket

What did your friend modify for this machine, and how? If he needs any pictures of the loader mount or bracketry or whatever, I'll be happy to take some pictures or do whatever I can.

DeepnDirt, it's interesting to hear about that big single cylinder engine. The two cylinder engines are notorious for having more torque than the three cylinder engines of the same horsepower. I would imagine the difference is about that again to a single cylinder. I wish I could see one, that would be really interesting. It probably started pretty well, too, with the single big piston.

 

[California]

DeepnDirt, it's interesting to hear about that big single cylinder engine. The two cylinder engines are notorious for having more torque than the three cylinder engines of the same horsepower. I would imagine the difference is about that again to a single cylinder.

I won't clutter your thread with irrelevant photos - but I thought a few of you might like to see a really big Eicher twin, maybe single, that was designed in Bavaria then subsequently built/used in India. We saw a lot of them there. These are rated to haul a several-ton trailer as well as typical farm use. The idle is unreal. Chuff ... chuff ... chuff. Rated peak output is at = 900 ~ 1100 rpm. In 2004 I posted some photos I took when we visited younger daughter who was studying in India as her semester abroad.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/all-other-brands/47640-eicher-india.html

 

[clemsonfor]

Funny you should ask the R/R track wasn't actually mounted it was only strapped on with some Romax wire to hold it in place for the time I needed it, the tractor had wheel weights but wasn't quite enough when using the brush cutter, so I had to improvise by using what was suppose to be my bench-top anvil, The bumper protrude enough so that the R/R simply laid on the bumper, I just needed a way to strap in down,:thumbsup: when I sold the tractor my plans were to keep the pc of R/R ..... The deal was when selling the tractors was to let the cutter go with it,
The one pc of equipment that required extra ballast weight, when the man attempted to load the tractor & cutter onto his trailer as he got to the deck of the trailer the front-end lift up, I thought quick as i was standing on the trailer quiding him on and jumped onto the front bumper bringing it back down, when he got the tractor loaded, he ask does it do that often? my reply was only with the brush cutter, I then showed him the weight I use when using the cutter, next thing I knew he had me talked in to throwing in my pc of R/R anvil, I would rather give him the anvil than to hear of him killed on the 6:00 news from flipping over the tractor, I had that pc of R/R for 30+ years been almost 2 years now and I've still not replaced the R/R track and probably never will,
That stuff isn't as easy to come by as once was,

I found a piece about 15"s long here about a month ago that was cut off after a patch on the RR. Lets just say it was laying around discarded.:ashamed:



There was also about a 6-7 ft piece, maybe what was cutout? I also have about a 6ft pice that was scrapped last year that i aquired out of the weeds as they had already scrapped it all and left it?

But i ride parallel for about 15+ miles of it at least twice a day on my way to work i see lots of it. And then on our way to town i pass another 10 miles of it if i go that way. I was getting about a 1ft "anvil" last year and the wife talked me out of it. Those 30ft pieces are still layed in the same spot but the small piece is gone.

 

[284 International]

I tore apart the front knuckle, and am going to post a link to the discoveries I've made. In the meantime, I thought people may want to see what I was talking about when I was commenting that some of the inspection and service items are not user friendly.

Here is the radiator cap. You kind of have to rattle it around to get it out. Obviously, how the hood lies, you can't see into the radiator to check for fluid. You have to use a dipstick somehow. Filling it is also a chore, requiring either a funnel or tiny containers.

The impossible dipstick: It took awhile to find it, even though there's not that many places to hide. I was looking for somewhere I could reach it. Here it is: (The round thing in the middle)

This thing is so small, perspective makes it tricky to tell from the picture how big things are. Here is my pointer finger trying to fit into the hole. As a frame of reference, it's still almost 3 inches away from the stick!

The other side, from the bottom, is no better either. Inside the circle you can see my two fingers and the dipstick. That's as far in as my hand will go. I still can't touch it.

 

[winston1]

This is all part of the price payed to make something so compact.

 

[284 International]

You're right, of course, Winston. Making it small compresses everything together. However, it wouldn't have been a big deal to put an extended dipstick on or something. Same with the radiator-a parallelogram hood opening could swing it forward a bit, and give a sight into the cap, and allow for filling. There's nothing wrong with the machine, mind you. It's impressive this little guy has likely spent the better part of 40 years working his tail off, and still runs great. But corners were cut in the design and layout of things. If you're my size, it's impossible to check the oil without long needle nosed pliers. I'm certain that meant the previous operators didn't check it daily, either! :laughing: