#25 Kubota B2601, B2301, B2401 Brush Guard Mod. See the Hobart Handler 140 in action.

welcome back to the channel and welcome to the 25th episode of my cluttered garage if you've been following along you'll know that i've produced a lot of videos featuring my kubota b-2601 compact tractor and many of the implements that i purchased with it we've also done some gardening videos and some general repair videos around the property including maintenance for my golf cart some rv updates and i've also featured some of my favorite tools i also have a fascinating beekeeper video and i'll post a link to that one right here it's by far my favorite video not necessarily my most popular but it's my personal favorite and i'm really not even in that video maybe that's why it's not so popular now actually my beautiful sister is in it so it should be more popular than any of my videos at any rate i'm glad you're here if you're new to the channel or if you haven't done so yet i invite you to subscribe to the channel click that little bell and make it turn gray so you're notified when i put out my next video if you hit the like button i appreciate that and join me in the comments where you'll find some great tips from our viewers now today i have a diy project for the b2601 so stick around one of the options i bought with the b-2601 is the front-end loader assembly and with that i also bought the third function valve and the grapple i have the land pride sgc 0660 grapple but there are several other ones that you can choose from from other manufacturers regardless i can tell you that the grapple adds so much functionality to the front end loader i just i love it now when my tractor was just about a week old i was using that grapple to go around the property picking up piles of limbs that had been there for years hauling them to a burn pile and just having a grand old time what happened at one point was i went to pick up a pile of limbs there was about a two inch limb sticking off to the side and when i went to pick it up and rolled it back that two inch limb came right between this brush bar scraped the side of my hood put a small crack in the plastic grill and that was the christening of my tractor but since then i've seen some videos on youtube obviously where folks have put some mesh behind this brush bar to protect that from happening i think it's happened to a lot of people generally what i've seen is expanded steel which is a mesh and they weld it behind here i like that a lot but i wanted to try something different so i ordered something online some perforated steel now this has half inch holes in it and it kind of matches the look of the plastic grill so i'm going to try to weld this behind the brush bar see what it looks like i realize it's a little a little more coverage than the expanded steel so it's going to block the headlights but if you know anything about the front end loader on this tractor if you have the front end loader assembly the headlights are all but worthless anyway so i think some light will get through but i'm looking forward to trying this project so the first thing i'm going to do is remove the brush bar so that i can do my welding and my preparation on a bench top and not on the tractor itself here's a close-up of the perforated steel now these holes are half inch holes the steel itself is about 1 16 inch thick so it's a nice hearty piece of metal by the way if you want to try a good tongue twister try saying land pride grapple five times go ahead i'll wait not bad it's pretty tough though all right let's get to work i'll save you a little bit of time these bolts are 7 8 of an inch so this is a 7 8 inch socket i've got a breaker bar here and i've got an adjustable wrench for the other side i don't know if there's a metric equivalent to 7 8 but i can tell you this fits just fine hey siri what's the metric equivalent to 7 8 okay i found this on the web for what's the metric equivalent to seven stroke eight i don't think it is no no i don't wanna look on the web i just wanted you to tell me the answer i also have a smaller 3 8 drive with a 7 8 socket because once i break them loose it makes them easy to remove with this you ever notice there's always one bolt that gives you a hard time there's always one there it is now one small challenge is that this brush guard is curved but this perforated steel is relatively flexible so i'm thinking i'm going to be able to put it in place and push it down or clamp it down to hold it in place now something else i'm noticing here where the brush guard bolts to the tractor this is flexible you can bend it in and pull it out a little bit see that so i don't want to weld a piece of metal on here that will prevent this from flexing or from being at the right dimension to bolt onto the tractor imagine if this pulls in and i weld it tight then i'm not going to open it up so what i'm going to do is cut a piece of wood the exact width of the front of the tractor i'm going to place it in between here and either bolt it or clamp it on if i need to and that will keep the width that i need to ensure that whatever i do welding anything onto this is going to retain the correct width and measurement that i need smart huh huh [Music] let me just stress the importance of this step what i thought was a good idea turned out to be a great idea cutting this block the width of the tractor frame which is just a hair under eight and five-eighths so i made the block eight and five-eighths so i'd have a little bit of room but look at this brush bar if you can see in the video it actually pulled in a good quarter of an inch if i had welded the mesh onto the back of this i wouldn't have been able to spread this wide enough to fit into place so by putting this block in place now i'm assured that this will fit right over the frame and just so i don't have to worry about this piece of wood shifting around i'm going to throw a screw in there with some washers and that'll just hold it in place that ought to do it all right so i've got the wood blocking in place to keep the dimensions that i need for the brush bar i feel good about that i am going to grind the surface of the back of the brush bar so it'll have a nice clean area to weld to and then i'm going to lay the mesh on top and then i'm going to figure out the next step because i don't know what the next step is let's figure it out together i've got my 20 volt cordless dewalt mini grinder with my four and a half inch 80 grit flap disc and i'll use that to sand down the edge of the brush guard and of course proper safety gear [Applause] all right i'm gonna try and pre-bend this mesh a little bit just to see if it can fit into place and we'll clamp it into place to hold it solid and we'll probably have to tap it into place in certain areas a little blacksmithing i'm also keeping the nice factory cut along the bottom because it's a nice finish it's between two sets of holes so i want to keep that there the top piece i'm going to cut off with a i think with a saber saw and then weld a small piece of angle iron just to give it a little bit of finish not bad that gives me a starting point to put a couple spot welds and then i can finagle it as needed i'll be using the hobart 140 handler it runs on standard household current i'm using o30 flux core wire and i've been really happy with this little welder i'm going to go with a power setting of 2 a feed rate of 30. i've got some of this hobart nozzle gel to help keep the tip clean do you use this stuff let me know in the comments what you think about it i've got these screw clamps so with these i can get a little more tight than i can with the friction clamps at least that's what i'm thinking looks to be true very nice seriously so okay so here's what i have so far not pretty but it's on the back side so it won't be seen now this piece i left it hanging over the edge i'm going to take a saw and cut that off and then just grind it to get that angle that i need i'm going to do the same thing on this side notice i didn't pre-cut anything i'm going to clamp it down weld it into place and then cut off the overlap with i think with the jigsaw and then just kind of finish grind it okay now this brush guard is racked a little bit what i'm finding is if i take this screwdriver and if i can be a bit of a contortionist i can put a little pressure on this mesh and move it up just enough to bring things back where they want to be the problem is i need to hold that while welding can i do it i feel like i can just enough to hold it let's try it i hope this he's in the shot [Music] that may have done it now one problem i have here is this needs to be pushed down tight against the brush guard and i can't put the clamp on here because of all this excess material so i think i'm going to have to try and cut it where it is and then clamp it so i'm hoping it doesn't break the weld loose there's really no other place i can put another spot weld to hold it but let's try cutting it and see what happens so now i can clamp this down nice and tight i'll weld along there and then along here re-clamp and we should be in good shape now the way i'm dealing with welding the thin metal to the thick metal is i'm basically starting out in the middle of the hole here and letting the thick metal heat up and then i'm either dragging into the thin metal to make a little puddle or i'm pushing into the thin metal to make a little puddle but that seems to be working pretty well to start right in the middle of this hole let things heat up and then push into the thin metal or pull into the thin metal just like that okay now i'm going to cut off these two corners cut across the top we'll add that finished strip and i think we'll be in good shape now to finish off this rough edge where i cut the mesh i've got this piece of half inch by half inch angle and we'll just put a piece across here weld it in weld it to the back and it should look great just going to clean up some of these edges with the grinder i've changed over to the grinding wheel from the flap disk [Music] [Applause] all right so here's the half inch angle i'm going to hold that into place by hand and just tack it in [Applause] now i'm just going to clean this up with some sandpaper my wire brush wipe it down with some mineral spirits that's still hot [Music] let me just be clear this is not a cheap diy project i kind of went all out on this you can buy the mesh the expanded metal mesh i think for like twenty five dollars i spent like fifty dollars on this perforated steel i bought the name brand paint rust-oleum i've seen better luck with name brand spray paint so instead of paying 5.99 for a can of unknown i spent 8.99 for this can so anyway we're gonna prime it gonna paint it and then we'll put it on and see how it looks time for orange [Music] so shout out to all my left-handers since i'm spraying left-handed now my right hand can't take it anymore [Music] all right we will let that dry and bolted on my camera has a bit of an orange film to it now i didn't realize i was that close to the camera bummer well it's the next day and it's raining but i wanted to show you the finished product after the paint dried i was able to bolt everything back into place make sure you use that wood blocking because it worked perfectly for holding the size that we needed to put everything back in place i think it looks great i hope you enjoyed the video if you did remember to subscribe and hit the like button and watch some of these other videos thanks again and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: My Cluttered Garage

Views: 53,907

Keywords: kubota b2601, kubota b2301, hobart handler 140, mig welder, hobart handler 140 flux-cored/mig welder, hobart handler 140 flux core, hobart handler 140 sheet metal, hobart handler 140 mig welder, kubota b2601 compact tractor, kubota b2601 brush guard, welding a b2601, grill guard, expanded metal, grill guard crash test, expanded metal grill grate, expanded metal grill, hobart handler 140 review, hobart handler 140 how to use, kubota b2601 review

Id: 3pi0QF-T99k

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020