Third Function Kit Comparison

A third function valve is going to be an accessory kit installed onto your tractor that's going to give you a third hydraulic function and additional set of couplers out on that front loader for operating simple attachments that are going to have a hydraulic function on them, kind of the entry level, the small things that are going to come over from skid steers and that kind of stuff, will now be able to work on your front loader. That's usually going to be for most people, grapples operating those simple cylinders to open and close the lids. There are also a very limited subset of implements that you can run that are going to have hydraulic motors on it, that don't require a whole lot of flow, so things like hydraulic post augers most commonly. Regardless of who makes the third function valve, you can pretty well break all of these valves up into two different categories. The first category is going to be the most common of them, where the valve itself is tied in between the tractor and the loader valve. There's a port coming out the side of your tractor that's generally labeled PB or power beyond. It's a constant flow port that comes out of the side of the tractor up to your loader valve, with the return line then that goes out of the valve back down to the tractor's sump.

Most of your third function valves are going to tie in line with that PB port. You could see very plainly here, this is coming out of the side of this valve block, and then feeding up to this diverter, operating the diverter then feeds hydraulic flow out to the end of the boom. And when it's not operating the flow continues onto the loader valve, and then ultimately back to the tractor. The other alternative plumbing for a third function valve is what's called a diverter valve. Now, when you're looking at a diverter, more often than not, you're going to find the valve body being out here on the loader's torque tube, and bolted out here and hopefully shielded in some fashion. When you operate that valve, what you're doing is taking one of your loader's functions, more often than not, the bucket curl circuit and switching that curl circuit over to operating that extra set of front couplers.

There's pros and cons to setting these things up in different ways, different valve suppliers, be it OEMs or aftermarkets, everybody offers different variations of these things, so it's kind of good to know what you're looking at. The pros of having a diverter valve, there are some, is that when you remove the loader from your tractor, most of the diverter, the valve, all the hoses and everything stays with the loader, it's much more of a self-contained setup. What feeds back to your tractor then is very simply only a wire in order to operate that diverter. You don't have extra hydraulic couplers and stuff to unplug from the tractor. You only have the four that go back to your valve. That's the OEM set up in some cases, specifically Kubota's OEM BX series valve is a diverter style valve. Very nice, you got one little wire to take off it. Doesn't mess with the swift patch, single release system for all of your hoses. 

It's a nice clean setup. The downside to that type of valve, again, where you're going to find the valve body out here on the Turk torque tube, is that in order to operate it, you will have to simultaneously operate your loader bucket curl function while pressing buttons on the loader stick in order to operate the diverter. While that's very possible to do, it gives you some flow control and stuff out here as well. It is a little bit more complicated, that motion of having to throw the valve and press the button is not nearly as natural as the other style of valve. And this is what you will more commonly see is this style of valve, where you can see here, my diverter is back off of the loader, back on the tractor, or in this case on the loader's mounting post. When you're going to operate this with the two buttons up on your loader stick, you'll actuate this down here. 

And again, sending flow out to your third function. Now, what you're doing at this point is interrupting the flow going to your loader valve, so it's going to take some of this flow away. You don't totally lose all of your loader function. You may have some excess flow coming back, giving you pressure in your valve, so you do still have some loader function, but multi-functioning all of these things together can be really challenging. It's not something you could throw flow three different directions and expect everything to work normally. Being that this valve body is back here on the tractor, when I go to remove the loader from the tractor, rather than unhooking, normally the loaders four hoses, I'm now going to unhook six hoses, because I'm also unhooking that third function valve too.

So, more hoses to contend with than the diverter style and also no flow control, right? When you're doing a diverter style valve, you can actuate that valve over just a little bit if you want a tiny bit of flow while pressing the button, but when you're using this function right here, where you're cutting over all the flow going to your loader valve, this is much more of an on and off decision without a whole lot of flow control. There's pros and cons to how these two different styles are plumbed into your tractor. At the end of the day, both of them are going to get the job done. You're generally going to find a preference out there for this style where you're diverting all the flow over, mostly for the cleanliness of the setup, because it keeps a lot less stuff out on the end of the loader compared to the diverter setup, which tends to add some mess out there on the boom.

Now, you can see here, the parts of this whole thing really aren't all that complicated, right? You'll find some people even take an attempt to home roll this kind of stuff themselves, ordering all the pieces and parts to kind of piece it all together and make one yourself. You absolutely can do that. It's very easy to understand mechanically what's going on here. For that reason, there's a pretty healthy aftermarket out there of this kind of stuff of companies who build these valve kits for tractors. There's going to be some differences between the different offerings, depending on the different manufacturers that you're looking at between an OEM third function valve versus something from a company like Land Pride or W.R. Long, who's the most major supplier of the aftermarket kits for your tractors. Your big tractor companies like Kubota and Deere will have an OEM offering. 

Not all the tractor companies do. Many of them rely solely on the aftermarket in order to provide these things for their machines. The benefit of the OEM valves is that they're going to be generally fit and tailored to your tractor a lot better than what the aftermarket solutions are, at probably about a 15 to 20% price premium. They're going to be a little bit more expensive, unsurprisingly, their OEM kits. And my opinion, it's very easy to look at those kits and see the value and understand why they're a little bit more expensive. When we look at the mounting positions of where those valves go and the shielding and stuff that's put around them, they're kept a lot tighter to the tractor. They're protected a lot better. In many cases, they're going to have their own hard lines going down the boom rather than relying on hoses, creating a fit on the machine that's a lot less apt to be damaged and is a lot cleaner installation than what more of a one-size-fits-many is going to have for many of the aftermarket suppliers. 

So, for myself, if you're looking for a really nice clean tight installation, the OEM kits are generally going to be the place that you lead with, but there is a place in the market for aftermarkets and I'll show you some of those. W.R. Long is going to be your biggest supplier out there for aftermarket third function kits. They're very, very good at having a very wide variety of kits to fit just about any model tractor out there. They do not sell direct. We do sell their products on their behalf. If you have a machine and you're looking for one of these kits, more than likely we can work with these guys in order to get something set up for your machine to give you that third function capability on just about any tractor. The one downside of these more generic kits and the further away you get from that original equipment manufacturer from the company that built the tractor, the more fit issues you're apt to have. Let's call it that.

When we look at this W.R. Long kit here, you'll notice how the valve body hangs off here on the side of the tractor. On my LX3310, it's very much the same way. I have a W.R. Long kit and my valve body dangles out here over the side. When that power then is fed up to the front loader, you're taking hoses the whole way here from the valve body and snaking those hoses out along the boom to get out to the end of it. Oftentimes those are going to be secured with zip ties and going through and finding places in order to tie these things back in can be pretty challenging. On this loader, it's better than most because they're utilizing some OEM mount points as you go down the boom. On a lot of the smaller tractors, it could be really challenging in order to find places to tuck these hoses in a clean manner. So, you get kind of a more janky mounting out here on the side. You get hoses that aren't routed quite as well.

And then button controls that come back here to the side on plastic mounting. So, by all means getting the job done, great company, we like their stuff, but there are a little bit more polished options out there in the market as well. If you're a Kubota owner, you actually have kind of a unique option here that no other tractor vendor really has. If you're not aware, Kubota owns Land Pride, they have for several years. And Land Pride actually kind of knocks off Kubota's own OEM third function kits internally. So, for Kubota machines, you're often going to have the choice of the OEM Kubota third function kit, or their OEM/Land Pride variant of the same thing. It kind of gives you a middle ground option between the more expensive OEM kit and a less expensive aftermarket option. The Land Pride kits are part numbered for their specific tractor, so this is not a one-size-fits-all option. 

And you're going to notice that this does kind of take a step towards having a little bit more shielded valving. You'll see, on this MX tractor right here, there's a good solid bracket back here underneath the loader valve, where the actual diverter body sits inside of this heavy duty metal casing, giving some protection to the plastic solenoids and stuff that sit off the side of these. When you go up here to the loader stick, you're going to find things like loom tubing in order to keep the wires cleaner, a little bit more stout buttons up here, still plastic, you'll find people that have problems with these buttons sometimes, but repairable, replaceable stuff up here, nonetheless. Also a power button to turn on and turn off these functions completely, so that you don't bump one of these by accident. That's not something that you find on many of these kits. 

The biggest difference between this Land Pride kit and the OEM is going to be the Land Pride one still will rely on hoses going out the boom, not hard lines. Those hard lines, there's a significant thing here to keep in mind when we're talking about all those options in terms of boom cleanliness and not creating more things in order to snag tree limbs on and that kind of stuff if you're going to be using a grapple. Those hard lines are a big cost driver in why the OEM kits are a little bit more expensive, and they also add significantly to our shipping cost too, when we may send one out to you. Those bends and stuff, and all of those tubings require some fairly significantly large boxes, even though they're not really heavy dimensional weight, shipping causes those to be pretty expensive to ship around.

So, those OEM ones have some real pros and cons there in terms of that cleanest shipping or cleanest installation, but higher shipping costs. But these Land Pride ones have been really popular for us. We use them a lot because they strike a really good balance between affordability and protection on your tractor. So, while we've showed you these two MX series tractors here today, remember that there's going to be small differences between every one of these kits from every supplier, depending on exactly what model you have. It's one of those areas in many places here that no two things are necessarily alike from one to the next, but if we go through it, we kind of try to give some high level overviews. This tends to be one of those places that you get what you pay for, right?

When you're buying a little bit better kit, most of the time, you're going to find that the quality of the components, and more specifically, the care taken in engineering those kits and components to your tractor are usually a little bit better thought out. Kind of going through and saying that OEM kit is going to usually give you the best of that stuff, the best of the fit and the finish. The aftermarket options out there are going to compromise in some of those ways that are a little bit lower cost and that Land Pride option for a lot of our customers, we find to be the sweet spot that kind of sits there right in the middle. We've done a lot of work on messicks.com to make these things very easy to buy. We go through and actually sell a lot of these things from all of these suppliers every year. 

Check our our guide to help you find the right third function kit for your tractor >>