Kubota FEL Level Gauge Using A Driveway Marker And Bargain Kubota Parts

[Music] hey folks motor track here and i want to talk to you about these parts that i picked up yesterday at the kubota dealer i was there to pick up a barrel of super udt2 it's the only hydraulic fluid i run in my tractors and they had a table set up just like this one with a bunch of parts on it that was that had a sign that said make offer they were all open boxes missing parts this is missing a bunch of parts uh but the bones are here and this is a uh bucket leveling kit for a newer kubota bx um the tube the mount and uh i don't know what that is the indicator i guess uh but i got it all for five bucks they they took five bucks for it and uh i've done this before you can see a uh a bucket leveling gizmo that i attached there and i got the parts from ebay uh again some stuff that was missing uh pieces i paid 12 dollars for it delivered and uh i got the extra parts and i put it together and i made it work it's not how it's supposed to be there's supposed to be a silver rod uh but i used one of those pins that you can use on your snow plow or you know to mark out the end of your driveway so your snow plow doesn't tear up your grass i don't know what they're called they're like a buck and a quarter at lowe's so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go inside and i'm going to try to print off the parts list for this to see what i'm missing and then i'm just going to run down to the local big box store and pick up the parts that i need to to attach this to my tractor now i do not have a newer bx i have a 2015 bx25 uh that is supposed the leveling kit that i have is supposed to be used with a quick attach uh i have a pinned bucket so there's going to be a little bit of finagling here to get this on and to make it work but we're going to give it a try and the worst that could happen is i just wasted a little bit of time messing around with it so be right back okay folks so uh i just pulled the uh parts list off the computer it took me about 20 minutes to find i found it at messick's i'll put the part number of the instructions in the link below so it'll be a lot easier for you to find uh but what it looks like i need is i need this bolt um i've already got the rod so i'm not really worried about that you need a locking nut a hex bolt any cotter pin that's a split pin some washers and all these things i probably have here i may have to just run down uh to the hardware store and pick a few up um the sizes are all over in this column here they're all metric obviously so like i said i may have some of this stuff laying around but i'm gonna go check and see what i have now whatever i don't have i'm gonna go pick up down at the uh at the big box and i'll be back in just a few minutes all right folks so i i went and uh pulled out all my buckets of stuff that i had i pretty much had everything but i still ran down to the store just to pick up a couple of things i wanted to pick up the bolts for this i wanted to use hardened bolts instead of the the cheap ones that i had um they they weren't very strong i don't think um i just wanted to get something that was a little more rigid than what i had so i got those and i also picked up this eyelet here um i picked it up in stainless i'm going to figure out a way to mount that to the arms of the loader so this is what i'm supposed to have on there if i had a newer bx and the guide rod would slide through this opening here but this is meant to bolt onto a flat spot that already exists on the new bx loader and i don't have a flat spot to bolt this on too i could probably heat this up and bend it around but i think instead of monkeying around with all that i'm gonna i'm gonna try to go with this but we'll see as we go along uh let's go on over to the tractor and we'll mark out the spot on the loader for these uh holes to be drilled and we'll get that done so the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to mount this bracket um right on here in this position now i don't have a whole lot on this hole but i think i got enough it's pretty uh pretty thick so i'm gonna go ahead and mark these here and mark that there and then drill those holes and i don't really need to have a whole lot of concern for this piece right down here where the pen is because this is matched to past that so when this is on i'll be able to move the bucket uh completely down to drop whatever's in the bucket out uh without the rod hitting this or at least i hope so if not i can always back uh these bolts that i put in here out and just put some collets in or some washers to space it out so this is where this is going to go i'm going to get the drill and i'm going to drill this out and then we'll be right back okay folks so as you can see the holes are drilled here and i got these stainless steel uh nuts bolts and washers to put on i was down there it's only a couple of bucks so i'm gonna do is i'm gonna put that on there and i'm gonna run these bolts through it and tighten it down i will spare you the agony of watching me tighten bolts and i'll be right back okay folks so you can see i got this mount bolted in and it's tight and it's right where i want it to be so the next thing to do is to take the rod guide and put it on there and kind of look and see how it's going to fit up and right away i've got a hurdle i have to overcome so the sharp edges on this right here going to have to be rounded down like i said this isn't made for this so i'm going to have to do a little improvising to make it work and the first improvisation is going to be to round these off so that this swings freely otherwise if it doesn't when the bucket goes to completely drop the load of dirt or rocks whatever i have in it this is going to break the rod the rod the telescoping rod so let me uh get this fixed and i'll be right back okay so now that i got this ground down here a little bit you can see that that slides right on there and then we'll put a washer there for good measure and put the pin in i'm not going to roll this pin over yet because i'm still kind of in the mock-up phase and then if we take this rod and i slide it down here we start to get an idea on how this is going to look so the important thing is that i have enough room there and you can see that i do even when i get down close to it you can see that i have enough room there somewhere to put an eyelet in in order to keep that uh guide rod or indicator rod how long that is i'm gonna cut that down so it's not so long but in order to keep that guide rod off of this area right here so i guess i'm gonna move this out of the way the camera out of the way and i'm gonna move the loader up and down a few times and figure out where that eyelet should go and then we'll uh we'll be right back all right so uh i started the tractor up and i rolled the bucket into the dump position and as you can see here this rod is hitting the cross member that's there and that's no good that won't work so what i have to do is i have to figure out how to get this lifted up off of that cross member let me set the camera here if i come around here and if i was to take this stainless steel eyelet and weld it right there i would be perfect i'd be good to go that would almost be the thing to do if i wasn't making a video because i could just weld it in i could cut the back of this off i could spray paint it and then it would be done but i understand not everybody has a welding machine so i'm going to fall on the sword for all my wonderful subscribers and i'm going to drill a hole through this cross beam and i know that a lot of you are going to absolutely lose your when i do that um but it's my tractor so i'm going to drill a hole through here and through the bottom and run this eyelet through and that will just about finish this job up so let me get it marked out and i'll drill the hole and we'll be right back okay so as you can see i drilled a hole in the bottom this is the bottom of the loader and these are the hydraulic lines that run underneath there and when you come over this way you can drop the bucket you can see that i drilled a hole from the top down here right straight through so i'm going to drop that eyelet in i'm going to bolt it up and then we'll take this rod here and we'll cut it and mark it and we'll put it in and i'll show you how i mark it using some heat shrinks and then we'll wrap this video up okay so as you can see this is all in now and we're pretty good to go i've got the rod that i picked up set inside the ride guide and all i'm going to do is take it all the way down so that i don't know it's about that much above the eyelet okay and then i'll take my tape measure and i'll measure from i'm going to get that under there nope i'll measure from the tip of the rod to i don't know somewhere between the end of the rod guide and the tip right so let's just say 28 inches which is going to put me somewhere in this neighborhood down here so i'm going to cut this guide rod at 28 inches and then set it back in and the important thing to remember when you do this is to make sure that the bucket is in the dump position make sure it's in the complete low position because that that's as far out as this rod is going to be when the bucket comes back up this rod is going to extend up this way so um that's one of those things where you want to measure twice and cut once so we're going to cut this 28 inches from the end of here to the end of the rod and we'll be right back okay so the rod is cut at 28 inches end to end okay and i'm gonna thread it through here and then into the guide rod and i'm gonna run it down to where i was before and that was you know just right about there this is one of these things where close enough is good enough for the moment you don't have to get too too tight so now i'm gonna start the tractor i'm gonna run the bucket up to level and then we're going to mark on both sides of this eyelet where level is so i'm going to start it up and i'll be right back okay so i don't know if that's going to show up or not but that's a torpedo level in my bucket and it is showing that the bucket is dead level right now i tried to do it with the engine running and everything but the the fumes got to be too much in here so um that shows that the bucket is at dead level right now so if we get up and we come on over here you can see right where this is here and uh what i'm going to do is i'm going to set this on a tripod so i have two hands and i'm going to mark that exactly where that is and then i'm going to use heat shrinks above it and below that mark to let me know when that is inside the eyelet completely i'll be able to see it from from the tractor seat so let me grab a marker i'll be right back all right with the bucket level uh we have the rod set where it belongs we're going to take a marker and we're going to mark where the top of the eyelet is where the bottom of the eyelet is and right before right where it goes in there so we have three marks we're going to put a heat shrink on here and shrink it we're going to take a heat shrink we're going to cut it just below this inside the rod so that there's only orange that you see here so i know that if i see black coming out of here i'm too high and if i see this up too high i know i'm too high also so you'll see how i do it there's three pieces of shrink tubing i'm going to put on there it stays in place it makes a good marking system and i'm going to use these marks to guide them so i'm going to head over to the bench and put these on and i'll show you how i do that okay folks so here we are over on the bench and i i've got the pin here with the marks that you can see there these 3 8 heat shrinks that i got from the local big box store i'm just going to slide them down onto this marking pin and they fit really well and when i set both of them on you'll see that it leaves a little gap here that you can see that's in orange now the thickness of this even when it's uh shrunken down is greater than the thickness of this orange pen so when it rides through the eyelet you'll actually see the bar drop down uh when it gets to the orange part so it's a real easy indicator uh to see see what's going on so i'm going to use this torch to shrink these tubes and then we're gonna go on back over to the tractor put it on and and we'll do a demo for you all right folks so here's the completed job you can see how nice the heat shrinks look once they're shrunken down look very neat very professional and i don't think you see it from that angle but that orange spot is inside the eyelet so i'm pretty happy with this it looks pretty good let's take it outside and see how well it performs hey folks so we're outside and there's a little bit of work going on around me and the only place that i really had to put the tractor on is a little bit of an incline so i didn't want that to get in the way or to kind of give you any false look so there's a torpedo level on the bucket you can see that the bucket's level and when we roll back and take a look at the level gauge you can see that it's it's right inside the eyelet just like it's supposed to so let's put the camera back on the tripod and we'll do a quick functions check and make sure that nothing's binding or hanging up anywhere and that everything just seems to be moving properly all right well that does it for me this uh turned out to be a pretty good find and a pretty good install so i'm really happy with it if you're happy with this video please hit the like button subscribe if you haven't already good luck and godspeed photography

Channel: BotaTrac

Views: 7,634

Rating: 4.8941798 out of 5

Keywords: kubota bx25d, kubota, kubota tractor, bx-series tractors, kubota front end loader, kubota tractor mods, tractor modifications, fel, kubota tractor level guage, tractor fabrcation, bx, L-series tractor, homestead, farming, compact tractor, level indicator, how to install bucket level indicator, kubota level indicator, do it yourself, easy to install, how to install level indicator, kubota la240 loader, kubota la240 bucket level indicator kit, tractor loader level indicator, botatrac

Id: l2Vg9wDqmPY

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020