Neil from Messick's here.
Today, we're out in the parking lot with a Kubota BX series tractor.
We're going to go through the steps of taking the mower deck
on and off the machine and show you how to install
and remove the non-drive over version of the Kubota BX deck.
This process is relatively the same on all BX series tractors,
whether you're looking at the new 80 series
or one of the prior models that have been built
over the last 15 years or so.
For the most part, you're going to have a latch in the front to draw,
two spring-loaded pins at the back of the deck,
and then a driveshaft coming down to the mower deck.
Like I said before, this is the standard version
of this mower deck.
There is a drive over deck available.
I for one, I'm usually not too shy to say that I'm not a huge fan
of drive over decks.
There's tends to be a lot more steps involved in what you're often shown
and getting those on and off and they don't necessarily
always work as well as what you want them to.
I'm not talking about necessarily Kubota
in that case,
every manufacturer's drive over decks or that way.
They're just always not what say they're cracked up to be.
To do one of these, the very first thing
that we're going to do is to start at the front of the tractor
and we'll have a latch right up here in the front,
where we have a pin that we can pull out
and then this arm to lower down.
When we do that, this piece can actually come right off
the front and then you've got a loop here
on the front of the mower deck that can be removed.
Once you've done that, you're loose now from the front
of the tractor, we can come around to the back
and pull out our two spring-loaded pins.
Then we have the mower deck basically loose for the machine.
Once you dropped your front loop and pulled your two back pins,
we're going to start the tractor up and lift up the lift linkage
and get it out of the way.
I'll clear my linkage and while I've got the engine running,
I'm going to take the wheels and crank them the whole way
to the side.
Turning the wheels to the side there brings them forward a little bit
and opens up the amount of space that you have underneath the tractor.
At this point now you've removed all the mounting hardware
and we need to detach the driveshaft from the deck.
If you ordered a PTO shaft on the back of a tractor,
these are exactly the same.
You have a release collar here to pool and then you just slide
this off the splines.
At this point, you don't have anything on the mower deck anymore
that's attached from the tractor and we simply need to get it out
from underneath.
There's a couple different ways you can do that.
These wheels do have 90-degree positions on them.
You can pull this pin, turn the wheel, 90 degrees,
pin it back in again and roll it out from underneath.
If you have a loader on your tractor, you can use the loader
to pick your front tires up in the air,
giving you even more room down there to work,
but I being a fairly able-bodied young guy
usually does grab the thing and pull it.
It'll skit across asphalt, just fine.
With my wheels turned sideways there, I've got a bunch of extra space.
I can just move more smoothly this side front and back
until I can slide it out from underneath the tractor.
That's it.
Now, when I put this away for storage,
I'm usually going to grab the other two pieces
that I had here on the front, this front loop in this latching rod,
and keep everything together here because these are small pieces
that are easily misplaced.
You just want to keep them there with your mower deck.
You can see how easy that is to get out
from underneath the tractor.
It can give you a little bit of an explanation
of why I personally scoff at drive over decks a little bit.
Again, I don't say this just for Kubota,
but for everybody's mower decks either.
There's a lot of steps involved, usually between getting
the deck in a position that it's not going to scoot
front or back,
making sure everything is in perfect alignment for the catches
and PTO shaft couplers.
They could be neat systems and work really well
when everything is finely tuned, but see how hard
that was for me to get out from underneath the tractor.
Frankly, it's going to take me more time
to do a lot of drive over decks.
There are customers that should buy a drive over.
Usually, I'd say it's for the guys who are able-bodied enough
to be able to easily slide the deck out
from underneath the tractor like I can.
If you're in that situation, certainly consider one.
There is a right customer for it, but it's certainly not for everybody.
To put this back on again, I'm going to do much
the same process.
I'm just going to do it in reverse.
I'm going to start by pushing the mower deck
back underneath the tractor,
hook up the PTO shaft, connect the back, lift arms first,
and then do the front latch last.
We'll start by sliding this guy back underneath.
Again, to do this angling my tires just I feel that it gives me
a little bit more room to slide this back underneath the tractor.
Once you have the mower deck slid underneath the tragedy,
you need to reattach the PTO shaft.
This is usually the most unpleasant part
of this process.
What you want to do is take the shaft,
line it up on the keying underneath the machine.
Now, once it's down there, you've pulled back
this locking collar,
and then the shaft will push forward the rest of the way
onto the splines and lock in place.
If you're lining this up and it's not wanting to go on,
it's usually because the splining isn't lined up.
On a mower deck, you can usually grab the shaft and turn it enough
with your hand
to move it just enough to get it onto the splines.
Once it's installed, you do want to make sure
you always grab these shads
and pull them in the other direction and make sure they're locked
in place.
Unlikely to happen with a mower deck
because it's pinned down here,
but if these things ever come unhooked while they're spinning,
particularly in the back of a tractor,
they can do a lot of damage down there.
Once we've got our PTO shaft on, you want to lower the lift arms
down to the mower deck.
Now, two things you need to keep in mind when you're lowering
those arms down.
Their drop height is limited by the mower height control,
so you definitely want to reach down.
If you have your mower deck cut, height set fairly high,
dial it down the hallway so that the arms drop down
the whole way,
where they easily get down to your deck.
If they're not dropping down, there's a dial right down here
beside the cut height control.
This is a speed drop lever, for your three-point hitch
and your mower deck.
If it's dialed off and closed off the whole way,
you may find that the lift arms and the three-point hitch
don't want to drop down at all.
They just won't move when you push this thing forward
because there's not enough weight hanging from the hitch.
Make sure this thing is opened up the whole way
and that your cut height control is set in the far down position.
Once you do that, you can push this lever forward
and the lift arms will drop down.
When they go down, you'd actually don't even have
to have the engine running.
They can just drop under their own power.
Then once you pin the rear of the mower deck,
you're not going to do the front.
This is one place I often see guys do wrong.
They'll do this first and then do the back pins.
That makes this a lot more difficult.
You'll always want to do the back first and then the front.
You want to take the loop here,
looping around the front of the lower deck,
and then take the latch right here.
You got two hooks on the bottom here
where you're going to slide this thing into.
Lift up this catch and slide this guy up and let you do that.
There's a spring-loaded pin there that's going to hold it in place.
It's really as easy as that, slide it underneath,
pin the back, latch the front and you're ready to mow.
That's the process of removing and installing a mower deck
on a Kubota BX series tractor.
On this size machine, this is actually
a fairly simple process.
If you've ever tried to remove a mower deck from a garden tractor
or a lawn truck or a zero turn mower,
those belt drive decks don't ever come on and off
nearly as easy as these things do.
These are made to come off the tractor so you can do
other work without that deck hanging around down there.
If I did this whole thing without sitting here
and talking to the camera, usually this is a
under two-minute job for me.
Again, if you're on a hard surface, like asphalt,
way easier because you could just slide
to thing right out from underneath the tractor.
If you have parts needs for equipment you already have
or you're shopping for a new piece, give us a call
at Messick's (800) 222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
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