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. To 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 (pictured is BX2200). 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.
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, 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 (pictured BX2230), 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 (pictured BX2350), 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 implement. 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.
We went from the 50 series to the 60 series, that really is your biggest and most significant change (pictured BX2360). 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 (pictured BX2380). 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 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, BX24, BX25, BX25D and now BX23S. 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 BX22 is 22 horse, BX23 was 23, horse and the BX24 was also 23 horse.
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.
