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
