Front Mounted Quick Hitch Attachments for Kubota BX

Front Mounted Quick Hitch Attachments for Kubota BX

Neil from Messick's here to show you the implements that are available to go on the front of your tractor, utilizing your mid PTO. Your tractor at the end of the day is a tool carrier, right? It's that base machine that you're going to take different implements and attach onto that tractor, depending on the application that you have. You often are going to see videos featuring the things on the three point hitch or the loaders and grapples in your loaded mounted attachments. But you may not see so many variations in accessory kits and things for the front of the tractor, utilizing that mid PTO is what I'm going to be able to show you here today. So we're going to have a quick walk around this BX tractor, show you how these attachments go onto the machine and see whether some of them might be a good fit for the front of your tractor.

So we're going to have some pros and cons here to the different places that you can put implements on your tractor, right? We can have the three point hitch in order to put implements on the back. You can have your loader if you have a skid steer coupler, in order to put those implements out on the loader or what I'm going to show you here today. There's going to be some costs or benefits or performance differences, depending on where you're going to put those implements. And you're going to find in many cases, you're going to have choices here. We could take something like a snowblower and put many variations of snowblowers on the back of the tractor. We can put snow blowers on the mid PTO like we're doing here today. Or if we really did some crazy convoluted things, even find ways to put them out on your front loader, but there's going to be differences between all those applications and all those different ways of putting implements on your machine.

Mid PTO

If you kind of go and you're painting with a broad brush, because there's a lot of implements that we can do this with. Things on the back of the tractor are generally going to be less expensive, right? Your three point hitch is a universal mounting. You've got a lot of companies out there making those implements. The competitive landscape for them is very intense and so you're going to find a lot of options and generally fairly well priced options going on the back of the tractor. There are things though that aren't the nicest to use on the back of the machine, right? Take this snowblower, having rear mounted snowblowers and having to look over your shoulder to see your implements is a literal pain in the neck. And so when we come up here to the mid PTO and we start shopping those implements that are going to go in the front of the tractor and utilize that mid PTO, you're going to find them to be a little bit nicer to use, right? Because they're out in front of the tractor, they are that however going to be a little bit more expensive. 

Quick Hitch

These are very specific implements made for a specific tractor, specific application, nothing universal about them at all. Very difficult, if not impossible, to move them from one model to the next. And for that reason, you're going to find them being a little bit more costly. There's a lot of components involved. We're going to look at the different pieces that are involved here, that it takes to make all of this work. The very first piece that you're going to need in order to support front implements on your tractor is a front quick hitch. That's this assembly right here between my snowblower and my tractor. This front quick hitch is going to be specific to both of these pieces. There's absolutely nothing universal about any of these things. Picking them up on the used market and finding the right things to adapt to your tractor is extremely difficult. So if you're shopping for these pieces, you want to make sure you're looking for the right thing. That's because your tractor itself has no place to attach implements here on the front, right? So this quick hitch is going to hang over top of the front weight carrier on your tractor, and then usually attach as well back underneath the machine to give it a little bit more structural integrity and tie it to the bottom side of the tractor a little bit better because there's cases where you're going to be putting some meaningful implements out here on the front. 

Those hitches are going to have varying versions that are going to interface between the hitch and the tractor. This is the newer four point hitch style that's on this machine. There were some older ones that use a triangular shaped coupler to drive up into that implement and lock it on one way or the other they're all going to have a nice, easy attachment system to be able to put those implements on where you're generally going to drive that four point hitch implement and drive into the implement and lock it into place in order to go to work. 

Snowblower

Now, this snowblower needs one more piece. We're going to show you a mid PTO shaft back in here that brings that power from the mid PTO out the front. That power is passed from this hitch out into the snowblower with a really cool love joy coupler system in here, that's engaged just by moving a lever back and forth. So nice systems to be able to take this stuff on and off. Kubota has a really wide line of these front snow blowers. Now there's residential versions, there's commercial versions, there's cheaper versions that could be done with mechanical cranks in order to do the angling or more expensive options that you can put on in order to have hydraulic rotation and electric angle like this one does here. There's even hydraulic options up here for the angle. It's a very, very thorough catalog of front attachments, particularly when it comes to the snowblower.

So when we have a powered to implement and we need to get a shaft out through the front hitch here in order to get to the implement, we're going to do that off the mid PTO. Now this mid PTO here is located at the back of the tractor. It's frequently used for your mid mount mowers. Now, when you go and you take that mid mount mower off, and that shaft is left exposed, a long shaft can be hooked onto here in order to transfer that power up through a couple of carrier bearings through the front hitch and then out into your implement. Not all tractors have mid PTOs. It only tends to be the smaller ones that are frequently sold with mid mount mowers for mowing lawns or the more deluxe models. More economy oriented tractors you'll find won't have mid PTOs or will have them as a fairly costly option. So you do want to watch. If you're looking for these front implements, don't make the assumption that your tractor can support them. You need to take a look down there underneath and make sure you have the mid PTO in order to be able to get the power out the front.

Pros & Cons

Now I mentioned there's pros and cons, depending on where you're going to attach your implements to your tractor. This right here is the front blade that's going to go onto that front hitch. Now we can get really inexpensive blades to go onto your three point hitch, but when you're able to put it on the front of your tractor, especially when you're doing snow, it's a lot easier to see what you're doing. You can see out in front of the machine while you're driving. You're not driving over the snow before you get to it. We would sell more and more blades on front loaders all the time. They're very cost effective. They can have the hydraulic angle functions. You're not driving over top of your snow, but you'll find it becomes a little bit awkward in order to use that blade that's sticking so far out in front of the loader. You can learn how to do it. Many people choose to go that direction, but performance wise, having the blade on the front of the tractor, bolted nice and close to it with hydraulic angle is the best of all the worlds that you could come up with, right? It's very, very nice to use.

It is, however, one of the most expensive options. You're going to need that front hitch. You're going to need this, you know, proprietary blade, right? It's made only for this coupler on this tractor. It's a little bit more expensive piece. So you're paying a little bit of a premium for it. I think these are really cool. You got cast iron skid shoes on the back. It's got a great sweep down here through the middle in order to push that snow off the sides. It curbs fronts. A very, very nice piece. These front attachments, including the other ones that we've talked about here today are made by a company in Canada called RadTech. They know what they're doing when it comes to snow implements, and they've got some of the best ones out there that are sold through Kubota's product line. 

Front Mounted Broom

Our last implement here in our family of front-mounted tractor implements is the broom. The broom is going to take power in the same way that the snowblower does taking that shaft up through the carrier bearings through the quick hitch and up into the snowblower, pass it out here to the end and then use it in order to drive this big rotary brush. These are going to have hydraulic angle on them. So you can tot them left and right, and say wind row the stones say, if you're cleaning off of the driveway. I also like to see people put on wheel kits on the back of this that lets you hold them up off the ground. You could do a little bit of the thatching and stuff in your yard with a broom as well, if you're careful about how you take it into your grass.

This is an implement that you're not paying quite the premium for, for having on the front of your tractor. Brooms are pricey implements even when they're on the three point hitch. There's not tons and tons of companies that offer them. So the competitive landscape for them, isn't quite the same as the more commodity implements that you tend to see. You also don't have the penalty though, by having this on the back of the tractor. Operationally, they're going to do very much the same job, but it is a very nice implement to have on the front of your tractor. It's a lot easier to drive going forward, where you can see what you're doing versus looking behind you.

Front Mounted Attachments

So that's a little bit on the front implements that are able to go on your tractor. I have covered most of these implements in more depth before and done other videos on how they are taken on and off of the tractor and the actual removal process down here. If you'd like to see more about this category of implements, if you search our channel, you're going to find a lot more videos about them. I thought it was worth coming out here today to be able to show all of these things side by side, it's fairly unusual to have them all here on the dealership, all going on the one tractor as a package. And I think it's cool to be able to see all the things that this implement system can do, right? There's a lot of flexibility in this. When you go and say, buy that quick hitch to know that there's three and four different implements available for, in some cases on other models, that are going to fit up to this tractor. It helps you get your value out of the investment that you make in the quick hitch system with that mid PTO shaft, because you've got some dollars tied up in this in order to be able to accept this stuff.