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.
These hitch setups typically have a lot of different kits involved. There's the main hitch setup here itself. In this case, a BX2810, a mid-PTO Drive kit which is the shafting, the carrier bearings and this long shaft that goes back to your mid-PTO that will transfer power up to the front. A lot of different pieces here that are selected depending on the particular application for your tractor, your model, your attachments.
Not one size fits all by any stretch of the imagination. If you're looking at one of these on the used market, there is no guarantee that it's going to fit to your tractor, because these pieces all need to be right for the application. On the hitch itself, when we come in here, doing the installation of it, there's the hitch assembly. Then, a couple of additional brackets that are bolted onto the front of the tractor and you can see them over here.
Once a shop has gone through and done this initial installation, there's 5-10 minutes or so of boarding some pieces here into the front. This hitch then can be picked up and dropped right onto the front of the tractor. We come over here, pick up the hitch. This weighs probably about 50 pounds or so. I'm going to bring the hitch, put the front J-shaped pieces over the curves and then push down to push the hitch back flat underneath the tractor.
Once we've picked the hitch up and set it on the front of the tractor, we've got this long pin that's going to lock it in place. If you look across the bottom here, you can see through this hole. You see there's a lot of little pieces that have lined up. If we just take this long rod and slide it through, we're going to lock all that stuff in place. Once that's in, there's a hole down here for a cotter pin. We just slide the cotter pin in to keep our support pin from coming out.
At that point, that's literally all it takes in order to put the hitch on the tractor. Once you've got the hitch on the tractor, you've got two hydraulic hoses that are part of the hitch to operate the raise and lower mechanism. These are typically going to be color-coded. If your shop set them up properly, there should be a white ring here around this coupler, yellow ring here around this coupler.
You're going to look back here on the manifold and you're going to see white and yellow caps that correspond. I can bring my yellow hose back here and just push it over the top in order to lock that in place. These, if you've not seen them before, are called flat-face hydraulic couplers. They're different than a pioneer coupler that would have been used on older equipment. These became really popular in construction equipment.
We're starting to see them now on compact tractors as well which is great. They're a lot easier to hook up and to keep a lot cleaner than what pioneers do. Literally, all you do is line this up, center it on top of the other coupler and push down on it in order to lock it in place. If you're having any kind of trouble getting these to go on, if you've got pressure in your lines, this is your loader up and down circuit. You can reach to your loader valve and push it into float.
That's going to open these up and release the pressure out of them on the tractor side. That can help overcome any kind of buildup hydraulic pressure that could be in those lines. If you are putting on, say, the 60-inch power angle snowplow onto the front of the tractor, at this point, you would just drive into that plow, lock it onto the front of the machine and then, plug in the hydraulic hoses for the plow.
Today though, we're doing the snowblower that we have here. This snowblower actually runs off the mid-PTO. We've got a set of carrier bearings and a stub shaft coming out the back of this quick hitch here. We're going to take this long shaft and take it between the quick hitch back to where your mower deck hooks up. There are two ends to this shaft. One has a regular PTO coupler on it and the other one has just this smooth connection shaft.
This shaft end goes up here towards the front. It's going to slide over the top of the splines coming off of the quick hitch. You want to slide that over and then push it on as far as what you're able. At that point, then, we're going to come to the back of the tractor. We're going to line up the quick-release on top of the splines that your mower deck would normally use. Once we get those back here, we're going to line them up.
Then, just push this in in the other direction until it locks in place. Now, once you've slid this over, give it a good jerk in the other direction and make sure it's locked. The last thing that you want is for this thing to come off when it's spinning. If you look at the back of our snowblower here, you can see what needs done when we're driving the tractor into it to lock them together. You've got these two J-shaped pieces here at the top. We're going to take this part of the coupler right here, drive it underneath of it and then lift.
Once we lift, these pins are going to line up with the coupler and drop in place in order to support the rear of it. Then, there's a little parking stand right here that holds this whole thing up when it's on its own. You're going to want to raise that up to make sure nothing catches if it hits it. In order to power this thing, you'll notice right here, there's this spline coupler coming off. This looks a lot like the way the Lovejoy coupler would be. It's basically fingers that are going to mate with the tractor.
What you're going to do when this thing is over the top, there's a female end over here that you push a lever forward that brings the coupler front in order to mesh with the snowblower. Nice improvement back here from the older series stuff where we had to mess with PTO shaft couplings and stuff that don't attach nearly as nicely as what this thing does. Let's give it a go. Now, one tip that we discovered here when putting this thing on and off is in regards to this parking stand here.
This parking stand has a lot of different adjustments on it. If you drop it into its full-down position, when the snowblower is sitting here, it wants to push it front a little bit, which makes it more difficult to mesh the quick hitch with it. If you actually put this parking stand in its middle position, it'll make the snowblower stand upright or actually lean back into the tractor a little bit which makes it a lot easier to hook up. If you're trying to put this thing on and you find that the blower and the hitch don't want to quite come together right, just try taking your parking stand up a couple of notches.
Once everything is on and lined up and you picked the snowblower up with the tractor, simply take the pins right here, turn them sideways and drop them back into their lock position. Once we've gone and put the snowblower onto the front hitch, we need to mate the PTO couplers together. Very simply in order to do that, you just reach down here and grab this large, black part across the front of the hitch and move this forward. That's a spring-loaded lever.
It's going to push itself front and hold those couplers mesh together. Now, some of your front attachments are going to have additional hydraulic functions. Take the blade, it's going to have an angle left, right, so you're going to have a set of couplers for that. In the case of our snowblower here, this has both the hydraulic rotator and deflector available. We have both another set of couplers and a third function here as well.
We're going to bring those back here and pop those into the manifold. There are hose guides going back to the back of the tractor here. You can either take the hoses and try to fish them through the flighting on the guide, or just pass the entire coupler through. It will fit. I find that passing the entire coupler through is actually a little bit easier than trying to fish a stiff hydraulic hose through the flighting in the stroke.
That's the process of mounting a quick hitch and implement it on the new Kubota BX80 Series Tractor. Now, you might look at me and think that, "That snazzy salesman over there knows exactly what he's doing." That is not true. This is actually the first time that I've ever done one of these before. Today, I did a little bit of finicking around here that you may not have seen.
At the very most, 10 minutes for the first time doing it, 5 minutes once you know what you're moving around. Really easy process and a big improvement over the way a lot of snow blowers have been put on the front of tractors in the past. If we can help you, for any parts and service for your equipment or you're looking for a machine like this or any attachments for your tractor, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 800-222-3373, or online at /uploads/assets/wwwmessicks.com.
We're out today with the Kubota BX2816 50 inch front snowblower for the BX80 series tractors. This is a unique piece that we have out here today typically we get a little frustrated when our vendors don't give us a whole lot of good information about front attachments and those kinds of things. We're going to spend some time on this one and hopefully be able to give you a little bit of information it might be hard to come by when flipping through a piece of literature.
