I know you guys are going to start to think of us a little bit as the Kubota BX site and, you know, a little bit of that can be explained in the importance that this product line is to us. Our dealership literally sells nearly a BX series tractor every day. We sold over 250 of these machines last year and our customers couldn't be happier. It is the highest volume single product that our dealership has it's subcompact tractors. Reading through the comments that a lot of guys have left on our videos in the past.
It's one thing to walk around and point out what's new in a tractor but it seems really useful for people to be able to go around and look at two machines side by side to be able to see the actual differences. We're going to do that here with the 70 series and the 80 series to show the things that Kubota has upgraded in this model. We're going to start here at the front of the tractor and work our way back. Most of the changes the most significant changes for me happen in the loaders of these tractors. You look over here on the back of the bucket on the 70 series machine you'll notice that the loader arms come down and pin directly onto the backside of the bucket.
Kubota did also have a pin type quick coupler available for this machine where you could come in and scoop your bucket up rather than it being pinned directly onto the loader. The 80 series has now the first skid steer coupler that any company has ever put on a subcompact tractor before. This isn't just a coupler to be able to quick remove the bucket it's also a universal coupler that can be adapted to other implements. The old machine you could put things like a snow blade and that kind of thing on but you are pretty limited into the variety of implements that you could select.
Now with this machine sporting a skid steer compatible coupler the whole world of skid steer compatible implements now can be put on the front of this machine. That, for us, is a really significant change because a tractor really is only as functional as the implements that you have for it and so this can open us up now to a whole new world of things that we can do with subcompacts. Also new is the linkage on this tractor for the quick park loader. You'll notice that there's some pieces right here on the inside of the loader that are not over here on the older 70 series loader.
These pieces allow you to fold down the parking stand without getting off the seat of the tractor. Simply by pulling a lever you can release this parking stand and lower it down for the removal of the loader. You'll notice we have other BX series videos showing the process of taking this loader on and off. It's very, very easy it can be done from the seat and really should take you less than a minute.
Another big change here in the loaders is the way that you disconnect the hoses between the loader and the tractor. In the new machine here you have this single lever quick coupler which in order to remove all the hoses you simply pull out a locking pin and lift a handle which removes all the hoses in one shot and leaves this clean, flat face couplers left over. The older series machine uses what every other tractor literally uses which is a simple pioneer coupler. If you've ever done a hydraulic coupler before there's a 99% chance that this is probably what you used. To do this is actually fairly simple. You pull a collar and they drop off but when you do it they tend to lose a little bit more fluid and they can be really finicky under pressure.
The new quick single lever quick coupler is a really cool feature on that new series tractor and something I really hope that we start to see migrate into other models. The 70 series uses a flip-up hood like all the other BX series before had done. A simple latch-up here and the hood will fold forward. Not a bad solution but when you want to really dig in and service this tractor you also need to pull these side covers off here as well to really access the sides of the engine, say if you could change your fuel filters and those kinds of things which are located behind there.
On the new series tractor now the hood is a single piece. The grill guard here can fold front and then you have a little lever back here on the side that you can pull. See if I can do this from the opposite side. The whole hood comes forward as one piece. You can now to get to all of your service points from the side of the machine without having to pull off side cowlings and stuff. Another thing too that I like about its design is that the side panel on the hood are all tack welded together on the inside just removing body panels that can vibrate against each other.
You should hear some less shakes and less rattles on this tractor because there's not as many seamed parts as there are on the older models. Most of the things that are down here under the hood are the same as the older tractors were. It's exactly the same engine, same radiator and air cleaner set up that's been used for years. One new thing down here though is this canister plastic looking thing. You may look at that and initially think emissions equipment and it's not. It is there solely to hold down the noise from the tractor.
When they switched to this hood design apparently one of the things the operators were able to notice was a difference in the engine tone and engine noise and so this was put on here in order to quite the air intake to keep the engine running quite. From the operator's platform, there are a lot of changes and a lot of updates. Most noticeably is the dash. When you look at the dash on the new 80 series the gauges are all analog and they're backlit versus the older series machine that used an analog tach but a digital gauge for a lot of the fuel levels and those kind of things.
This was lit but not nearly as visible and nearly as easy to read as what the newer 80 series dash is so there is some nice improvements there. Also on this machine, you'll notice that the steering wheel tilts. There's a lever right here on the dash that you can do and the steering wheel will tilt up and down versus the older series that were fixed in place. The one nice thing that we like about tilt wheel is that it lets you adjust for a larger or a smaller operator. It's not so much as a positioning thing where you want your hands to be.
If you're short and you need to be closer to the wheel totally tilting it down brings it closer to you or if you're a larger operator and you need a little bit more space folding it up gets it away from you. Having a tilt wheel can accommodate a larger variety of operators comfortably. You'll notice too that the loader stick has changed. A big change for us in that now you can set your elbow right up here on the seat and have your hand rest right here on the loader control. There's also a third function valve that can give front hydraulics out the loader with buttons that will go on to this knob.
On the older series, your loader valve is out in front of you. This is fairly common on other tractors, but having it to the side is usually a more comfortable operating position. Having those third function options available from the factory is really nice as well. We've been able to do third functions on these tractors by working the hydraulics up ourselves but when the factory makes kits available to us it always comes out a lot cleaner and a lot nicer and more polished than when we work things up in the shop.
Most operators are always out with their cell phone in their pocket and their drink in the cup holder. You can see here on the 70 series tractor we were able to accommodate that with a nice large cup holder right over here on the side and a plug for your cell phone down here around the bottom. The 80 series improves on that by keeping the cup holder here at the side but creating a storage compartment for your phone and its power jack right around the back here. One problem that we often have with those DC plugs is that when they're exposed to the elements and they get wet the metals that are on the inside of them tend to corrode really quickly. They don't hold up real well to the weather.
By putting that plug here inside of the cup holder it should last a lot longer and keep it from corroding.
Another thing that changed between the 70 and the 80 series is the height of the ROPS. The 70 series had a roll bar that was just a little bit too high to pull into a standard seven-foot garage door. By dropping that now about three inches on the 80 series you can now leave your roll bar up keep your safety equipment in the up and engaged position and still be able to pull into a garage door without taking the door out on your way in.
Also in the top of the roll bar are pre-drilled holes for work lights.We always get very concerned when we see customers drilling on roll bars in order to mount work lights because roll bars are safety equipment once you've modified them you're now opened a liability if that roll bar happens to fail in a rollover and so you'll never see a dealer drill on a roll bar. Now in the 80 series, there are pre-drilled holes in the roll bar that are done by the factory and so they're certified for safety as well. Now that gives us that place to be able to mount work lights and stuff in different various positions around the roll bar.
On the backhoe versions of these tractors, we went from the BT602 backhoe to the BT603. Really the hoe's themselves are virtually unchanged except for one significant difference in the way that they mount the tractor. The older machine mounts into the tractor with a pin probably about a large inch and a quarter pin that goes between the backhoe and the tractor. You can see the orange part here at the back is the backhoe the grey part is the tractor. This is a really common setup. That's how most backhoes are put on machines and to remove it you simply pick the whole rig up in the air pushing the backhoe and the tractor together forcing that pin into alignment and you pull it out.
The one problem that we find is that many people don't take their backhoes off frequently and what will happen is paint will start to stick or things will start to corrode a little bit in place and those pins will be a bear to get out. Sometimes requiring you to get a hammer or something to tap them out. Kubota does a new cam system now here on the new BT603. To remove this backhoe you simply pull this lever out rotate it into an up position removing this locking mechanism right here and allowing the cam to open so backhoe can fold off the tractor. We have several other videos showing that process done repetitively and exactly how those pieces work.
There's an improvement here to show basically in the way that the backhoe comes off the tractor. Now both hoes come off both of them aren't really that big of a deal but as machines wear and they start to get a little bit more rusty and things start to stick in place hopefully the owners of the 80 series tractors will have a little bit easier time of things. These are some of the changes between the 70 and the 80 series BX tractors. If you have any questions about this you can give us a call at Messick's we're available at 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
As always, we're always looking for trades for these machines. The 70 series machines resell very, very well. If there are improvements here in the new series that you would like certainly give us a call you might be surprised at the cost difference that we can give you between these two series.
We're going to to go through the process today of putting the Front Quick Hitch system onto the BX Series tractor. This hitch is used for the front snowblower and front blade systems. It has a couple of different parts and moving pieces here. We're going to show you exactly how the setup of this system works to switch from, say, a loader configuration to a snowblower.
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.
