Kubota BX23s BT603 Backhoe removal

I’m going to take a quick trip through the process here of taking the backhoe off of the new BX23s tractor loader backhoe. This backhoe was fairly similar to tractors that they’ve had in years gone past but there’s one significant difference in the way that the backhoe releases from the tractor here that we want to detail. You come right over here with me and look down here underneath the fender. Most backhoe is usually pin onto the back of the tractor and in the case of this machine. This is a little bit different.

One problem that we found on the pin type designs of years gone past which is very, very common, virtually every tractor pins to the hoe that depend if it’s not taken on and off frequently will tend to want to get stuck and so Kubota came up with a new system to remove the pin from this tractor and the way that it works is you pull this lever here out, twist it and then push it back in again and when you do that, it pulls this catch block out of this cam and releasing the backhoe from the tractor.

We’ll go through the process here with me and just watch as we do this from the very beginning. Put a little bit of rest here for this because you need some hydraulic flow, else things move maddingly slow. We’ll just pull the two levers here for the outriggers and drop them down to the ground. You don’t actually have to do anything with the outriggers here but I usually lower them down just in case something pins the shift unexpectedly. I have the outriggers here to catch it. Don’t use the outriggers in order to pick the tractor up off the ground. The very first step is actually picking the tractor using the bucket. What you want to do is use the bucket and pick the tractor up in air

You’ll see that I actually lifted the rear tires off the ground just a little bit. Once you’ve done that, we want to go back to these two little levers and do this rocking action. Pull the lever out. Twist it to pull out the lock and push the lever back in to hold it open. We’ll do that for the left and the right side. Again, very, very similar to other back, at this point, you would normally be pulling the pin out of the place in this locking mechanism. Once those are both open, you take your backhoe and roll your boom shut and you can see how the backhoe folds away from the rear of the machine. Once it’s away from the rear of the machine, now, you take your outriggers to put your outriggers down and lift the backhoe away from the tractor. You can see the gray down there is the tractor.

The orange is the backhoe and you’re just lifting the backhoe up out of two J-shaped pieces. Once you’ve done that, you can hop on the tractor and pull forward and pull away from the hoe. At this point, you should trust shut the tractor off. Some guys now would usually choose to go and put some blocks or something underneath the backhoe. If you let the things set like this continuously, the hydraulics will leak down and eventually the backhoe will be down on the ground. It’s a good idea to put something under it support it. Two by four’s blocks of wood, whatever you want something for it to sit on.

Once you have the thing shut off, there are three hydraulic hoses here on the back and one change that did happen in this backhoe was a change from traditional pioneer couplers to flat face couplers. Flat faced couplers are what you typically would find on bigger construction equipment. The nice thing about flat faces is when you pop them apart, they don’t leak as much fluid, they tend to be cleaner and the- because the ends are flat, they don’t collect dirt and stuff quite like traditional pioneer couplers do. You see that flat edge right here and when I have all the hoses off, I’m left with this one loose hose.

This loose hose needs to turn around and go back to the tractor and get pushed right back into that flat phased coupler to loop in place. That’s the hydraulic loop for the backhoe and what you want to do is return that hydraulic pressure back to the tractor again because that’s what operates your three- point hitch. You never want to typically start the tractor up with that hose unhooked. It always wants to be closed back around so that hydraulic pressure can run in the loop like it’s supposed to and not dead end with that hose hanging loose.

This off tractor now, we can detail how this clamping mechanism works.

First thing you want to pull this lever out is pull the lever out. You can see now, when I push that lever down, this pulls out, allowing this to spring open. That is what’s going to release the thing from the backhoe. When you go back onto the tractor again, we set the backhoe down. Push this back into the mount. You can see there’s a spot in here for a pin that’s going to force this closed and when it forces closed, this piece can come back in and hold it shut. This simple locking mechanism, just like that, is what will lock the backhoe onto the tractor and the nice thing about this mechanism is it’s not going to – it’s not like a pin that’s going to sit in a hole and is going to rust in place or we frequently have with new tractors that have paint where the paint will stick and that mechanism is just a really easy way to remove the backhoe from the tractor.

Follow along with me here. I’m going to show you exactly how to put the backhoe back onto the tractor. Putting it back on again is usually a little bit more difficult because you have a couple more things to line up but if you visualizes it this way, it’s pretty easy to see what you’re doing. The back end of the tractor here has these two large J’s down here in the bottom and what you’re going to do is set the backhoe right down into the bottom up here. If you look over on this side, you can see this big orange pin over here. I’m going to set this pin down into the bottom of this J.

Once it’s in the bottom of there, I’m going to curl the backhoe back up into the tractor. It’s going to catch the pin. Lift the backhoe up in the air and then lock the pins in place. Once back the tractor into the backhoe, you just want to shut the machine off. Reach around the back of the machine here and release the hydraulic couplers. Now, once you release these couplers, there’s a couple pieces that you can just pop back in place again.

The hoses between the tractor and the backhoe just pop back together again. That easy and those flat phased couplers are a lot nicer to do than pioneer. I’ll tell you that’s a big improvement too.Once you have hydraulic power back to the backhoe now, you’re going to manipulate the backhoe in order to get it back on the tractor. The first thing that I did was reach down here to the outrigger controls to pull them towards me. In order to lift the outriggers and that will set them own into those J’s on the back of the tractor.

Once they’re down in now, I want to take the bucket and push the bucket down and that’s going to stand the backhoe back up into the tractor. I do that by taking this stick and pushing forward and it’s going to roll back in. My cams are going to come into place and lock right back onto the back of the machine and once that’s locked, I can raise my outriggers and away I go. That’s the backhoe installation and removal on the Kubota BX23s. If we can help you with a machines like this, give us a call on Messick's, we’re available at 800-222-3373 or online @messicks.com