[Music]
Neil from Messick's here,
we were lucky enough to have five of the six different variations
of Kubota's BX Series tractor all in stock at the same time.
So take a quick walk through each model here with me
and we'll point out some of the differences as this tractor has grown up over the years.
The original tractor in the BX series was the 00 series machines.
You can notice as we go through each one of these,
with the exception of the tractor loader backhoes,
they're all four-digit model numbers,
the first two digit being the horsepower of the engine,
the second two digits being the series of the machine.
This is a BX 1500, it is the only two cylinder model out of this entire family.
It's a little interesting if you look down here under the hood at this two cylinder.
The engine itself has a big balancer up here on the top
because the two cylinder will wobble a little bit more
because it's not naturally balanced.
Three cylinder engines are naturally balanced
and don't require balancers in the engine in order to smooth them out
so this one is a little unique in that regard.
There was an actual time that we could sell this tractor, mower and loader package
at about a $10,000 price point which is a nice thought.
You remember this is 15-20 years ago now.
Really is what started this series being so popular, right? Because at the time
if you went and you bought a good heavy garden tractor,
you were paying $7,000, $8,000 for that machine
and for a little bit more money you could get into a subcompact,
a real tractor with a PTO and a three-point hitch
and the beginnings of what real tractors and real equipment can do.
There were some intricacies to this model at the very first time
that they came out with them and most of those intricacies
were in regard to the attachments.
You'll notice some original 00 series tractors
where when you remove the loader from the machine,
the valve itself is attached to the loader as opposed to the tractor
and that caused a lot of complications.
Now with implements and those kinds of things for us here in the Northeast
where we use snow blowers and front blades and those kinds of things,
we need that valve in order to operate those implements.
There are some funny things that you can get to and in regards to the attachments
and stuff in this original series and a lot of those things were fixed
when Kubota went to the 30 series.
When you look at a 30 series machine, that's one we don't have out here today,
a 30 series and a 00 series look very, very similar to each other.
As we can recall there were some changes made back here to the levers
to lengthen them a little bit to make it a little bit more ergonomic
but most of the changes were in fixes to that loader valve setup.
In the 30 series you'll notice when you take your loader off
the valve stays with the tractor
and so that valve is now available for those other front attachments.
It was in the 50 series over here when Kubota really started making some big changes
to the tractor and you can see here this machine looks entirely different
than the 00 series or the 30 series did. We had some big styling changes,
some much brighter and larger headlights, a loader valve and hydraulic couplers
that are now integrated cleanly into the machine
instead of kind of dangling off the side.
If you looked at a loader on a 30 Series,
you see a big valve body sitting over here with a long loader stick
coming right off of it, kind of like some of our third-world tractors that we see today.
You'd have hydraulic couplers up here with a lot of messy hoses
and stuff coming off the valve.
Now in this because the loader is put on probably about 90% of these tractors,
the valve is now integrated. It's part of the tractor keeping all the internals
and everything underneath the hood instead of hanging off the side,
so it really cleaned that up a lot.
If you look down here on the platform, the platform is also a lot more open
and that's because the forward and reverse rocker pedal now loops down
underneath the deck as opposed to the entire pedal setting up on top of that.
When they made that change that really gives you a lot more foot space
across the middle here, giving you more space to rest your feet when you're out mowing.
This tractor here has a second generation seat on it
and we were having this discussion here in the office earlier today,
that when this machine first came out it had a seat that sloped forward
and we had a lot of guys really uncomfortable with that because as you're jostling around,
you often would start to slide off the front of that seat.
If you've got one of those seats, call our parts department.
There's about a $250 alternative seat that's available
that is a much more comfortable option and makes you feel a lot more secure
when you're driving the tractor around.
Could see too we started picking up more modern lever clusters
and stuff up here on the side with bigger grab handles as opposed to bolting them down
through the fenders.
Just a newer operator's platform seatbelts now that are up as part of the seat
as opposed to being bolted down onto the tractor.
The effect of that is that when these are up here on the seat, they don't flap around as much.
There’s is a long seat belt coming up from below the tractor.
Now the big mechanical change took part around the back here.
All of these tractors have always been category one three-point hitches
but the 00 series and the 30 series, the first machines out of the gate
were what's called limited category one, which means you will find
some category one implements that just don't fit real well behind the tractor.
If you look down here at the bottom
you'll see that the lower pivot point for the three-point
is really far down on the bottom of the tractor and that impacts your lift height.
If you had a large three-point blade behind here,
you wouldn't really be able to lift that blade very high up in the air.
When Kubota went to the 50 series,
they changed the geometry of the three-point hitch back here
and raised the lift the left arms up a lot higher.
Here's your effect, by raising these arms up now, when you lift the three-point up
you can get a lot more height out of your rear implements.
This is now a full category one three-point, where the older tractors were limited.
When Kubota redid the styling on this tractor,
they did make the change from metal fenders and hoods to plastic,
and that did end up being a bit of an issue.
We've never been a real fan of seeing plastic on tractors
because we just don't see it wearing very well
and that's really what happened in this machine.
We started seeing a lot of instances where the plastics were breaking
because of our big American rear ends
getting on and off of our tractors all the time
and so when we're stepping up here on the fender,
there is always a place right down here where the fender comes down and meets the floor
that we started seeing a lot of cracking.
Kubota responded to that by releasing a support kit to go down underneath the frame.
If you're looking at one of these tractors on the used market,
you always want to put your eyes down there
and see whether that support kit has been installed or not.
We really ended up replacing a lot of plastics under warranty at the time.
Another frustration where they had with this tractor too
is the plastic cowling right here that covers up the battery
and acts as your screen for your radiator,
worked itself out of alignment a lot
and was pretty difficult to put on and get everything to line up well.
These two things were addressed very quickly.
Most of the time when you see Kubota make changes to these tractors
there's four, five, six years between each iteration of the machine
and this case here this one happened oddly quickly.
Kubota responded to some of those widespread complaints
by changing the hood and the fenders back to metal again.
When we went from the 50 series to the 60 series,
that really is your biggest and most significant change.
We had more small changes when we went from the 60 series to the 70 series.
When you walk around the tractor here the two look very, very similar
but there were some new changes to implements and attachments
and those kinds of things and one of the things that they did start offering
at the 70 series was drive over mower decks.
You can see we have a drive over deck here mounted to this machine that has the ramps
and everything to be able to drive up over the deck to get that on and off.
There's also some differences in some of the high horsepower models now.
We have a 26 horsepower offering that has some more deluxe features on it,
a nicer seat in particular, it's really the biggest change
along with that extra three horsepower over the lower models.
There's some more variations in this one as well.
About halfway through its existence they move to a dash one model code,
and you can identify those because the ROPS is slightly different
and there's also a rubber floor mat on here as well.
It's stuck down to the floor,
it's a little bit more nicer molded glued down format rather than a loose rubber one.
Again, small iterative changes as we went from the 50 to the 60 to the 70.
70 also has a new dash on it as well, it has an LCD screen on here
that gives you a little bit more of options for readouts
and that kind of stuff that you did over the older series tractors.
Another small change between the 60 series and the 70 series
is the location of the brake pedal. All the BXs before this model,
all had both a hydrostatic pedal and the brake pedal on the right hand side.
There's some good logic to that because it prevents you from stepping on the pedal
to go forward while also pressing the brake at the same time.
There were some competitive noise made about that so at some point
Kubota decided at the 70 series to switch the brake to the other side.
You'll notice over here the brake is on the left
and on the 70 series now, we've got a brake over here.
why you would want to drive forward and step the brake at the same time
is a little beyond me still at this point,
but it does give you more of an automotive feel and an automotive layout
which we're always looking for that comfort level for people on equipment.
Going from the 70 series to the 80 series was when things finally got exciting.
We went through the 50s, the 60s, the 70s with only small changes from year to year
and it really felt like Kubota was never giving us quite enough
that we could go back to the customers that had BXs from years gone by and say,
"You know, look what's new, here's something that's worth upgrading for,"
and we're really happy in the 80 that it feels like we finally got that.
There's a lot of new stuff in this tractor.
I've done several videos already walking around showing a lot of these features
in a lot of detail, doing demos of loaders and backhoes and stuff coming on and off.
I'll breeze through these changes here pretty quickly for you
but if you want to see them in a lot more detail,
we do have other YouTube videos that will explain those differences.
Many of the changes on this tractor are in the loader itself.
If you look on the back side of the bucket up here, we have a skid steer quick coupler.
That skid steer coupler enables you to put pallet forks or oversized buckets
or a whole host of additional implements that can be found on larger compact tractors
or skid loaders onto your subcompact.
Every other subcompact from every other manufacturer
and every other BX Series machine before this
this has not had the option for a skid steer compatible coupler.
Any kind of quick attached systems on the front have always been proprietary
and not an industry standard. This one is the industry standard version, which is awesome.
This loader also- as standard equipment can be removed from the seat of the tractor
without getting off the machine. In order to remove this loader from the tractor,
and I have other videos on this process being done, simply lift the loader up in the air,
lower down your parking stand from the seat of the machine,
reach on the back of the loader post and flip two levers to an unlocked position
and then pull a single lever to release all four of your hydraulic hoses.
At that point you can back the tractor away from the loader and go to work,
and that whole process really shouldn't take you a whole lot more than a minute or so,
without having to get off and bang on pins or twist things around.
It's very easy and very slick in my experience.
The 80 also has a new dash than the other series of the tractors have,
and this one is a return to a lot more analog gauges
than what we had on some other tractors in the past,
or we had a lot of digital gauges that were a little bit difficult to read.
This one is also well backlit too, so if you're working at night
it's very easy to see your instrument cluster working in the dark.
Kubota take another opportunity here to redesign the hood as well.
All the other BX series tractors have had two-piece hoods,
where the top would open and all the cowlings around the side would stay in place.
This one changed now to be a single piece design.
You pull one lever and the whole hood flips forward as one piece.
It does make the tractor a little bit easier to service,
you don't have to pull so many pieces off
and loosen wing nuts and stuff to slide cowlings off,
one flip up hood and everything comes up and works.
It also doesn't rattle quite as much too because you don't have as many separate parts
up against each other. These things are all tack welded together back around the side,
so there's not as many places for things to rattle against each other.
The ergonomics of the tractor are updated as well and the most significant thing to me
is the move of the loader valve. All of our other series tractors
you'll see the loader valve up here in front of you,
in this case it's moved back here to the side.
When I put my armrest down, my hand can now sit right here on this loader stick.
Speaking of the loader stick, because of our skid steer quick coupler on the front
and our hip knotted loader stick now,
there's also a third function hydraulic kit available.
You can add two buttons onto this stick to operate two hydraulic couplers
out on the front loader, allowing you to put on, say, a grapple or hydraulic angle plow
using all factory kits.
We've been able to work some of those things up over the years using aftermarket kits
and having our shop work things up, but when Kubota offers a factory kit
we definitely have a lot cleaner installation
without so many exposed hoses and wires and that kind of thing.
Having a factory third function or subcompact is a really cool option.
In addition to tilt steering as well,
since we typically have all sizes of operators on this tractor,
it is nice to be able to take the steering wheel and be able to move it up and down
and support an individual-sized person.
Shorter operators tend to push the steering wheel down a lot further
in order to get it closer to them so they're not reaching quite as far,
while a larger operator might want the space
by having the steering wheel in the up position.
There has always been a tractor loader backhoe version
of each one of the BX Series tractors,
starting from the BX22 at 22 horsepower, BX23, 24, 25, 25D and now 23S.
Some of those numberings probably could have been done a little bit better.
For the most part when they did the original ones
they were simply following the engine horsepower,
the X22 is 22 horse, 23 was 23, horse and the 24 was also 23 horse.
They haven't always made a whole heck of a lot of sense
but that is the order that they've gone in.
For the most part, the early backhoes have had some small changes,
but the more recent ones have not had many at all. This is a BX- or a BT rather, BT601.
BT601 and BT602 found in the 60 and 70 series
are nearly identical backhoes to one another. Very, very few things have changed.
The 80 series machine that just came out, the backhoe itself, again, is very similar
and not much has changed
except for the system that you use to remove it from the tractor.
You'll find on backhoes that are mounted on compact tractors
when you tend to not remove them from the machine often,
the pins and stuff that hold them in place tend to get stuck
and not want to come loose very easily.
On this last version now a cam system is used
to grab the backhoe and attach it to the tractor.
That should help the thing to release a lot more easily
if it's not frequently taken on and off the machine.
We have some other videos that demo exactly how that works if you'd like to see,
just check the links at the end of the video.
That's the Kubota BX series tractor,
the top-selling subcompact tractor of the last decade.
If you have any questions on any of these machines,
you need parts support or considering one for purchase, give us a call at Messick's.
We're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
[Music]