How to Take off Your Tractor's Loader

Now a tip that you want to remember here before you go and take your loader off is that you need to have your front bucket on the tractor. I recently had mine off because when I parked my tractor in the garage, I wanted a little bit of extra space to be able to walk around things while I was working. You need to have that front bucket on so that there's enough weight on that front loader in order to have the loader balance itself when you pull the tractor away. Things like pallet forks may not be heavy enough in order to keep that loader down. So you need to be sure that whatever implement that you have on your front loader is heavy enough to help this thing balance. And by all means, you have to have something out there. This wouldn't work if I just went at it without anything on the bucket at all. So we'll scoot out here and quick couple my bucket on.

Now, the first thing that you're going to do is lower the parking stands. So I'm going to raise my loader up in the air here. And on the bottom of this loader, you're going to have a parking stand. Now, depending on what tractor you're doing this with, the parking stands are pinned up in different ways. In my case here, I have a cotter pin on the inside of my loader brim to pull out. I swing the arm down and I pin it back in place. Tractors like Kubota's BX series are going to have a single pin and a one-piece stand that flips down. One way or the other, you're going to have a stand that flips down that needs to be pinned securely in place.

This next step is best done on level of surfaces as you can find. I'm out here on the driveway. If you go to put your loader back on again and your tractor and loader are on different planes, they twist with one another. It can make getting that loader on much more difficult. So what I'm going to do is take this on the driveway here to make it nice and easy, and then pick the front tires of my tractor up in the air. Now, when you do this, you want to keep an eye on your parking stand. You don't want to use the parking stand to lift the front of the tractor. That lifting should be done with the bucket, with either the bucket roll or the boom circuit should bring your tires up off the of ground there. But keep an eye on the parking stand. I see those bent periodically by people that mash the stand into the ground. Those little arms are just there for support. They're not going to pick up the tractor. 

Now, by picking the front tires up in the air what you've done is forced together the loader post itself and the receiving socket that's down here below it. It has a curved piece in the back here. And the force of that tractor being up in the air, forces those pieces in the perfect alignment. Now, if everything is good, all you need to do here is take this pin then and slide it right at it. It literally should be this easy. Now, sometimes you're going to find a little bit of tension on things. Don't be afraid to tap stuff around here. Sometimes this pin, the keeper down here, the pin will be pushed up against it. You've got to tap that thing out. Or if you're tugging on this pin and it doesn't want to go because things just aren't perfect or you're not on a nice, smooth driveway, tugging while you're rolling your loader bucket back and forth and kind of varying the pressure on this pin, can allow it to come loose. 

There's not even video magic on this one. That is literally the first time I went after that pin. This is the one difference here that we do find on Kubota tractors. And I do this process on competitive brand machines, things that we traded in and that kind of stuff. I can't tell you why, but every time I do it, things like this just go better. I can only attribute that to better manufacturing tolerances. Now, once you remove the pins from both sides of your loader, you want to go and start to set this thing down and curl out of it. Put your wheels back down on the ground, curl your loader away and curl your bucket shut. And when you do that, you'll notice this arm will lift up and away from your tractor. And you're just going to curl this thing out. Now, when these things are new, see how it's stuck a little bit right there. I only have 40 hours on my tractor and new machines like this. Sometimes you'll find the paint once to stick and it doesn't want to pop right out like you think it should. Right? There's nothing holding these two things together. Why is it not coming out?

I've released them before by jostling the loader bucket and giving it a little bit of a shake. Or even once in a while, walking out and actually jumping on the lip of the bucket a little bit to kind of push the thing down and it'll pop away from the tractor. Just be careful you only have your bucket off the ground a little bit when you do that. Once these things are free and you can see they're away from one another, you want to back your tractor straight out from your loader to give yourself enough room down here to unhook your hydraulic hoses.

Stuck Loader

Now, the first thing you do before you unhook your hydraulic hoses, and this is really important, you'll save yourself a lot of grief if you remember this step. Is before you unhook those hoses to take your loader stick and rock it in every direction. Do you see how my loader moved a little bit there? What you're doing is equalizing the pressure in the hydraulic lines. You're letting the cylinders relax. You're letting any excess pressure on the loader side, flow back to the tractor. And once you've done that, go through and unhook the pioneer couplers here for your hoses and they should pop right off easily. I've done another video before talking about how to get these couplers attached when they're under pressure. It can be a real headache. These couplers are a piece of cake to do when they're not under pressure, but if you get pressure in those lines, they can be really hard to connect. So a video there to help you if you've run into that before, and you're fighting with this part of the process. But if you remember to equalize the pressure with the loader stick before removing the loader, you'll save yourself a lot of grief.

Removing Hoses

Once you've removed these hoses, it's worth taking a moment and going through and actually putting on their color coded dust caps. These little coupler are not super expensive. They're 20 bucks a piece or so, but you will extend the lifespan of these things significantly if you keep dirt out from the inside of them. Again, they'll be easier to connect. The O rings and stuff that are on the inside will last longer. You have a little color coded dust cap on both the male and the female side. You see these things lost on implements pretty often. It's not a bad idea to pick them up from the parts counter or replace them if you happen to lose them. They only cost a couple bucks.

You have your loaders standing and your hoses all disconnected. You start your machine up and back straight out and away from your loader. There it will set. Now, reinstalling this is simply going to be the same process, but in reverse. I'm going to drive my tractor down the middle here, kind of keeping eyes on both sides. I see the sides, the tractors scuffed up periodically from people that don't drive right down the middle. And you don't want to get too close, because you want to leave yourself enough room in here in order to reconnect those hydraulic hoses. And just like we said before, before you go to reconnect the hoses, just like when you disconnected them, shut the tractor off. Work the stick in every direction and then attach your pioneer couplers. 

Reconnecting the Loader

Now, following our process in reverse, we're going to put the loader back into the rack here again and lift the tractor up in the air. Now, there's a very specific way to do this. You need to take the bottom part of the loader post, this pin right here, and set it into the U-shaped piece down here at the bottom. And then curl the loader back into this round boss right here, which will then ultimately catch it and allow that loader to lift the tractor up in the air without a pin holding it in place.

Just to point out one more time so that you see these pieces clearly. This curved part here in the back of the hole, where the pin goes through, needs to come across this round part right here at the top of the loader post to catch your tractor and lift it in the air. So now we're going to start the tractor up, set it down the rack. And you'll notice that your loader moves very differently when it's not attached to your tractor than what you may be used to. Right? When you move your loader stick up and down, you're going to move the post this direction. When you go back and forth, you're going to take them up and down. So it's not necessarily the natural motion that you're used to. So I'm going to drive up here to the tractor. I have this high enough that I can get underneath of it. Then I'm going to start to set it down here into the rack. (silence) And once I have both sides down in the bottom, I'm going to push this forward and curl this back in. 

It's good to either have your tractor in neutral or drive into it gently like I was there and then pick it up in the air. Now cool enough, right? There's nothing holding these two things together. You have to loaders up in the air. Once you've done this, you can go forward here. Either jump off your or reach forward like I do. Take these pins and slide them back in their holes. So if I take my pin on my right hand side here and I slide this in, you'll notice it doesn't go the whole way through. Do not panic. Do not go for a hammer, specifically. The first thing you want to do is use your loaders hydraulics in order to move things around, right? I'll take this pin and gently push on it while I set my loader back down, roll my bucket back and forth in order to wiggle these parts into place. Right there it is. Eventually you'll hit the spot where that thing will line up perfectly and slide right in without you having to force it. So now I've reconnected my third function hydraulic hoses. And our last step, we're going to set our tractor back down on the ground, lift the loader up and then pin our parking stands back into their storage location.

So that's a rundown on how to take a loader on and off of your tractor. This is by far the most common loader removal system that you'll find of machinery across the industry. Whether it's ag tractors, compact tractors, new, old, most companies have some machines in their product catalog that use this exact same system. So if your tractor looks a little bit different than mine, if you look around a little bit, you're probably going to find the same bits and pieces that make this whole process work. Just keep in mind as you're moving these things around, you never should really have to force things. If you're smart about manipulating your loader hydraulics, you'll find ways to jostle your loader around to get those pins to slide out or get the loader to come off the tractor if something is sticking a little bit. 

How to attach and remove a loader on uneven ground

Video: https://youtu.be/4Iwhd6jM-rQ

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