Kubotas at play. Er, I mean work!

Nice tractor Dave! Did you happen to get it from the Kubota dealer in Walpole, NH? My wife and I sometimes head to that area to run some errands. I’ve gone to that particular dealer just to look at all the cool stuff they have out front.

 

I’ve dealt with Townline for 24 years and have, for the most part, good things to say. Dealing with the sons isn’t quite the same as with their dad, but things change. I buy a few things from Walpole, but not much. I will note that when Deere pulled the rug out from under their local dealership John Deere Pulls Dealership from New Hampshire Company After 84 Years that Pinnacleview stepped up and hired a bunch of them.

 

Another important piece of equipment you will need is something for ballast. That can be a ballast box or heavy attachment for when you are lifting logs with a grapple. It doesn’t take much to lift the rear off the ground. The ballast will also take some of the load bearing off the front axle.

 

That's what I use for ballast . I think mine weights 550. I have some old pieces of 1.5"x12"x18" boiler plate that I'm going to try to figure out how to add (and still be able to remove) that would add another 200lbs +/-.

 

It appears you could hang suitcase weights off the sides of that, but they are spendy. It’s a learning experience, but I’d recommend getting closer to 1k lbs of weight to offset the big logs. It will save you’re tc some unwanted exercise.

 

New tractor picks up a lot more weight than what I'm used to. This was effortless and old one probably wouldn't have done it at all. Green oak and sycamore is heavy stuff.

 

Was running the mini ex out in the woods clearing debris from trails and it died on me while tracking back to the house Friday afternoon. Acted like it was out of fuel, but it was half full. It was just about dark, so I headed back to the house to get a headlamp and fuel filter and walk the 2,500 feet back out to it. Swapped the fuel filter and tried it, it ran for a split second and died. The fuel pump sounded different as well, much louder than normal.

Came back to the house, and called it a day. Got up and headed to the Kubota dealer which is a hour away for a fuel filter and water separator filter. Those two filters came to $115 for the pair, I got a set of spares for the shelf as well. Came home swapped the water separator filter, and it fired for a second, but the battery was about dead. While pulling the battery I noticed it was pizzing fuel from the underside onto the track. Shut the fuel off and found a rubber line to the fuel pump was broken. Looks to have rubbed on a bracket for 700 hours. Pulled it and took the battery back to the house.

Trip to Napa for fuel line while the battery charged. Headed back out to the machine and installed the new fuel line and battery. I will say self priming is awesome! She fired up and tracked back to the house without issues. Figured I walked about 4 miles back and forth to fix it. It couldn’t have happened closer to home.

 

Wow! Nice detective work!

 

Made a chain carrier this morning. 3" schedule 40 fits like a glove. Hard to see in the picture but I basically made a canoe out of the pipe. Left it stick out a little so I have something to grab. Not my idea.

I'll paint it when it warms up some.

 

Still a great idea I got here

 

The L45 was a snow moving beast this last storm.

 

Picked up a set of Trygg SMT Flexi logging chains for the tractor. Rears weigh 110 lbs each and fronts weigh 57 lbs each. They have a bunch of adjustments on them for tensioning which is great. It does require mounting and dismounting to get them adjusted perfectly. This will help with traction out in the woods for the rest of the winter. I’ve still got a bunch of logs to skid out, but several snow storms adding 18” of snow has kept me from the woods. I’ve wanted a set of these chains since I bought the tractor, just never really needed them until this winter. The Norwegians really know how to make a set of chains!

I took the pics in the field while driving it before making final tension adjustments. They fit tighter now. I’ve got to zip tie the loose links to keep them from flopping around, and they are done.

 

Falling Objects Protection Systems (FOPS) come on all the TLB series Kubotas. They also protect you in a rollover. Having this over you in the woods is very nice. Keeping the sun off of you is also very nice.

 

Thanks, I will say it might be worth the drive to Maine to buy them from Canadian Chains versus ordering them online. No affiliation at all, just passing on info. I’m sure shipping 325 lbs of chain isn’t cheap, but the savings was around $1200.00 picked up versus online chain websites.