How to Operate a Kubota BT602 Backhoe

This is Kubota's purpose-built backhoe for the BX series tractors. We're going to do a quick walk-around here, show you the functions of this backhoe, exactly how it works. We'll dig in the dirt out here a little bit, and you can check and see whether this is something that is right for you. One thing that you'll notice is a little bit different on this backhoe, compared to the lot of the other ones that we put on tractors, is that there is no separate seat for the backhoe. On most tractors, where hoes are added on after the fact, a second seat is put behind the backhoe. When you want to operate it, you get off the tractor and get back onto a second seat.

On the BX series, given that this is a small tractor for a backhoe, Kubota uses the primary operator seat as the position to operate the backhoe. You'll notice on the front of the seat, you come around over here, there's a latch on the front. If you simply grab this latch right here and lift it up, it will release the seat and it'll stand up, at which point you can swivel the thing around on a carriage and once it's around, push it forward, and it'll lock into position. Once it's locked in there, you can step up onto to backhoe and at the rear of the backhoe, right by the base of the stabilizers, there's a place to put your foot that has some grips on there, so you don't slide off.

You could step up there and spin right around and put your butt in the seat. One nice thing about this setup is that I have a lot of room up here. Again, you've got to keep in mind, this is a small tractor. With this nice high and wide roll bar, I can comfortably sit underneath it here. I have plenty of leg room here for my legs to stick out, and all of my controls are right here in a comfortable operating position. If you've never operated a backhoe before, the first thing that you want to do when you get up here is get the tractor firmly planted in the ground. And that's done with the outriggers here on the side, as well as your front loader bucket.

These backhoes are surprisingly powerful. When you start to dig and pull the backhoe front and back, you can actually roll and reposition the tractor with the power that this hoe has. Getting this thing planted in the ground is important to good, safe digging. There's a sticker right here at the base of the valves explaining what each one of these sticks does. When you look at this initially, it can look pretty intimidating. Essentially, the left and the right stick both have separate functions and can move forward, back, and left to right. We'll go through and visually look at what each one of these functions does here shortly.

Really, the important thing to remember is, don't expect to be an expert as soon as you sit down in this seat. There is a real learning curve here, even for myself. Now, I'm a salesman, I don't spend every day in the seat of one of these machines. It does take a little bit of time before these things start to become second nature. If you watch a guy who runs a backhoe for a living, it is absolutely amazing what these guys can do. Don't expect that you're going to sit down in this seat and be an immediate expert. There is a learning curve here and it does take time until moving these sticks around becomes second nature.

[engine noise] I reached out behind me here and turned the tractor on. If I use the loader stick, I can pop my front wheels up in the ground just a little bit, and then, come back here to the rear and lower my outriggers and pick the back of the tractor. By picking it up in the air like this and getting those three points on the ground, the thing gets good and planted, so when I start to dig, it doesn't move the tractor around too much. Now, wait for my other side to come down and up I go. I'm working in the dirt right now, if you happen to be working on an asphalt situation, there are replacement pads that can go on those outriggers to keep the pad from pushing down into the asphalt.

They are large sections of rubber that go under there in order to give it a little bit softer touch on the ground. Before you're able to start to move the backhoe around, there's two locks in here to keep the hoe from swinging around in transport. There's one right here that you lift in order to stop the boom from swinging left to right and another one over here, on the side, that keeps it from dropping out. It's important to have these installed when you're transporting and trucking the backhoe because it will leak down as it sets. Also, a good idea to put it in when you're in your garage as well because, while the tractor is parked, the backhoe will leak down, that's perfectly normal.

You don't want the backhoe to leak and hit something behind it or fall back into a wall. Once those are out, you can now move the backhoe around freely. If I take my left-hand stick and move it front and back, my backhoe will lift up and down. You'll see when I get to my furthest back position, right here, it starts to slow down. That's because Kubota puts a cushioning valve in this backhoe. Makes it nice compared to some lesser backhoes where it doesn't bang around as much. When you get to the ends of the cylinder stroke, it slows down and cushions itself back into place.

Your left-hand stick brings us front and back, and taking that same left-hand stick and going left or right swings the hoe from side to side. Now, taking my right-hand stick, if I push that away from me, I take the dipper stick in and out and if I go left and right, I curl the bucket. In the industry, there are two different control way outside, they're ISO or SAE. Typically, ISO controls are what's the most commonly found. The SAE or what some guys will refer to as John Deere controls that are totally backward and screwed up like much of their equipment is.

As you move the hoe around, you could do multiple functions at the same time, but you will find a time, with so many cylinders in the backhoe, that things will fight for flow. This is going to be exaggerated a little bit right now because I'm running it wide open. I'm going to lift the boom up and pull the dipper back at the same time, and you'll see that the dipper goes back first and then the boom will lift up. That's because the boom circuit needs a lot more power in order to lift than what the curl did in that place. Now, you'll notice, I'm running a low RPM so you could hear me clearly. If I reach up here and give it more revs, that will go away.

Don't be afraid to run a backhoe with a little bit more speed on the engine. A lot of guys that are new to this will sit down and they want things to move slowly, but by moving slowly, some of that multi-function control that you get in this quality backhoe doesn't work as well. It needs the flow, and it needs the pressure, to behave properly. Giving it a little bit of extra revs makes it actually easier to operate, even though it might be a little bit quicker. We're going to go up here to the woods and find a place to actually dig in the dirt a little bit.

Okay. We're up here in a small wooded area. I've got no idea what's under the ground here, but we're going to do a little bit of digging. Just to give you some rough ideas on, conceptually, how to dig. This is a six-foot backhoe, which means you have about six feet of reach, or a six-foot flat bottom, when you're digging a trench and down to a hole. That's what's considered a two-foot flat bottom. If you were to dig in an arc, you'd have a two-foot flat area in the middle. While this is a six-foot hoe with about six feet worth of reach, you can't reasonably dig six feet straight down without repositioning about every two feet.

You have about four to five feet of good operating depth here without having to reposition the tractor over and over again. If you think of the backhoe as your arm, the point that has the most digging force and power is the bucket curl circuit right here. As the smallest pivot on the backhoe, it has the most breakout strength. If you're working in a tough area and you need to dislodge a rock or break a root, curling with the bucket is going to be the way to do it. The first thing you want to do is use the boom to put the backhoe in place and then curl the bucket closed in order to actually dig. This backhoe is available with either a 10 or a 12 inch bucket. The 10 inch bucket will have a little bit more power here, being that it would about two inches smaller. Typically, we equip all of these with 12 inch buckets. Here, in Pennsylvania, we have some clays and some pretty significant soils. Even the 12-inch bucket doesn't have much trouble digging here. Just to give you an idea, I'm a salesman, I work on equipment, I'm around this stuff everyday, but it has probably been two years since I've run one of these things for more than 10 minutes.

I'm running right now at, probably, about half throttle. Again, just to keep the engine noise down so I could talk clearly. Even at that, I've got plenty of RPMs for a smooth movement. I don't have to listen to the scream of the engine. All right. Well, you can see where it's starting to get down, and some shell and stuff there. My spoil's coming out, my trench is stating to get a little rocky. The teeth on that bucket down there are replaceable teeth. Guys that are working in sandy soils or uncompacted soils, those teeth last for a long, long time. If you're like us, and you happen to break through shell and that kind of stuff, it will wear away the outside teeth pretty quickly. The teeth aren't expensive. From memory, I think they are about $20 a piece. If you notice them wearing, you can rotate them to bring the middle tooth to the outside to help them wear more evenly.

I'm going to keep digging down here to see if I can find something really hard. Now, if you're somebody who has run equipment before, been on a mini excavator, this is not that. This is a great backhoe for working in your backyard, doing wide trenching, we've had some pool contractors, and that kind of stuff, use them for running a pool lines. It's not quite enough machine, if you really want to go into commercial work. A machine with pilot controls is going to be a lot nicer to run, and a lot more productive. This does have limitations. Dollar for dollar, it is about one of the best backhoes for your money that you can buy.

If you price tractor backhoes, and adding a backhoe onto a small tractor, they are not cheap. Kubota really sells this BX25 package at a really good price point. Makes it, actually, pretty economical in the world of tractor mounted backhoes. Now, you get some good chunks of shell starting to come up and the teeth are breaking up there. Kind of disappointed I didn't find any big roots or anything in here. Now, if you watch down here in the trench for a minute, when I go down in here to try to bottom the thing out, right. I'm going to sink my teeth into this shell. If I pull back on this stick, you see I can't go anywhere because I'm trying to dig with my boom rather than my bucket.

Right here, I'm stuck. As soon as I take it, I curl my bucket. If you look back down in the trench there, again, when I curl my bucket, now, my bucket can dig into the shell and start going because I'm digging with the stronger function. Your strength in this backhoe is determined by not the dipper stick force, if you look by your spec sheet, it's with the bucket digging force. The bucket digging force is really the more important one because if I mount it here and I'm trying to dig with my dipper, I'm not going anywhere, right. As soon as I go in, and I curl my bucket, that's when my teeth start to work, and my stronger function starts to work, and I can get a bucket full of dirt.

Now, I dug right below myself here. Probably, got about three foot trench going on. You could see it here, with the amount of reach that I've got, I can get out to about here, at which point, I can start to keep going to get a nice, long trench going. Now, if you're looking at one of these for landscape chores, and digging out bushes and stuff around your yard, you're not doing anything nearly as strenuous as what I'm doing here, digging in rocky soil. You would be surprised if you go out and you dig stumps. Stumps can actually be deceiving difficult to get out of the ground. Depending on the variety of tree, and how deep the root system is, and how thick and heavy the roots are, it can take time to dig stumps out. Having to work around the stumps with the backhoe, as opposed to going right into the stuff itself, it takes time to get them loosened and out of the ground. You can't expect to take this thing straight into a good sized stump and just pop it right out of the ground.

I've been running this just about half throttle. If I ram it up the whole way, you can see how fast I can work here. I get a little bit more power out of my bucket because I have more hydraulic pressure, but a lot more speed because of the additional flow. When you start running it like this, even experienced backhoe operators start to become surprised what this little thing could do. It is a lot more capable than what most people would expect from a size of tractor that it is. That's the backhoe on the Kobuta BX Series. All of our stores have one of these machines for rent. We charge a $105 a day. If you'd like to get one of these out in your yard and see how it works, and if it's a machine that's really right for you, we've got a machine available that you can take out under a non-demo circumstance. Take it for a weekend, see how it works. We will do short term demos, if you just want to hop out here in the woods, like I am today, and do some digging in the dirt and see how it works. We really like the scenario of you being able to take it home, and run it yourself, and get a good feel for the machine. We sell the better part with about 60 of these things a year. They're very, very popular machines for us, and done very, very well. There's probably no single product that we sell that we just get as consistently positive feedback about. If you have further questions, you can give us a call at 800-222-3373.