1980's B7100 HST-D project

On 12/4/09 I bought my first tractor, a B7100 HST-D. This thread will be a journal of all of the work I do to this tractor. My goal is not a complete restoration and wont always be with the original stock items, but it will be thorough and it will be nice.

I found this site before making my purchase, and made the choice to buy my tractor based on some of the information I learned here. Orangetractortalks has already been a wealth of info for me since buying the tractor. I know I will have many questions along my way and I know to some of you, they will be mundane and monotonous. In return for the help thus far, and in advance for all future help you may lend, I am making this thread to give back to the site. This thread could become a great resource for info for any newbie B7100 owner. I guess a lot of it can also apply to B6000, B6100 and B7200.

I paid $2,600.00 dollars for my tractor. It came with a Woods RM59 60" 3 pt mower and a front end loader. I was told it might be a Johnson but he know that it did come off a Bolens tractor (this meant nothing to me lol). I made the offer on the phone without having seen it and he accepted. So I rented a U-Haul trailer the same day (Friday) and then drove 4 hours upstate NY to get it. The whole way up I was thinking there was a chance that it was not as clean and well working as stated in the ad. When I got there the tractor looked great. Started easily on a very cold night seemed to have good power. Done, I bought it and headed back home. Got home around midnight and was annoyed I had to work Saturday because all I wanted to do was play.

Saturday afternoon came soon enough. I started it up, drove around for a while testing every handle I could find. Everything worked and worked well. Well, as best as a newbie to tractors could tell. But worked well enough for me. Only thing I noticed was a little wobble in the front end while testing top speed. But I would worry about that later. (who needs top speed anyway?)

The Tractor


The mower


The Loader


Let the fun begin

Thanks killerbee. So now that's 2 pieces of advice I have so far from this forum.

1. Never let anyone else drive my tractor. check.
2. Never let the coolant run low. check.

My first order of business was to get that Woods RM59 on ebay ASAP. Listed it in about 24 hours after buying it. It only sold for $177.00 bucks. But that's okay because I used the money to buy 5 gallons of super UDT hydraulic fluid and and transmission filter, engine oil filter and air filter. Also left me with some lunch money for this week. I plan shortly to drain the transmission and replace the oil. Also going to change engine oil and filter. and then the gear oils, where ever they may be.

Did a little searching around and found a parts manual for my tractor for download in PDF format at http://www.kubotabooks.com. Just enter the site and scroll down to 'Tractors Owners Manuals' and then scroll down to the B7100 HST-D

I then found scoured Ebay for a shop manual. There were plenty around, but the particular auction I bid on I got one for $41.00 including shipping. I am waiting for it to arrive. I have so much work I want to do.

Now that the manuals are bought and the mower is sold, it's time to get my hands dirty.

THE LOADER-

The loader came with the tractor, but was never used on the tractor. The guy I bought it from started to make the needed changes and brackets needed to mount this FEL (Front End Loader) (Yes, obvious as hell now, but when I was first reading, I didn't know what it was) on to this tractor. The loader came from a Bolens tractor and nothing was the same with the B7100. He manages to to get the up-rights mounted but never finished the job. I would have preferred he didn't start at all, because I would have done things differently, but it was done good enough and there is no reason to undo what he did.

I had to now make the supports and brackets to attach the up-rights to the front of the tractor frame. The top of the upright frames had welded brackets and tubing on both sides that had to be removed. He had cut them off with a torch, but left 3 or 4 inches on it and that which also had 3 pcs of 3/16" steel braces to make it strong. In any case, it took a good 2 hours of grinding and cutting with a small Makita grinder to get it done and still leave the metal visually pleasing. NOT and easy task.

Once they were removed, it paved the way for me to make my own brackets and weld them on and fianlly get started on the real work.

Bellinghamster, pictures would be incredible helpful. I have not seen any brackets or framing that extend back to the rear axel. Perhaps I need to consider beefing up what I am doing. Yes, picutes! thanks

Thanks Bellinghamster! that's just what I needed. I now know that what the guy before me was doing will not work and I must redo that work. What I was making is no where near strong enough by the looks of that subframe.

How much do you think it weighs?

Well, it's been a little while since my last post. I have been working in my tractor, so I will try and catch up with the posts over the next few days. The images below shows one of the loader uprights. I ground away all the old brackets that it used to have and put my own on. IT's a simple piece of 1/4 stock with a hole in it. I rounded it off to match the Cylinder brackets on teh loader/ I actuly got the 1/4" stock of a piece of 1/4 x 1/4 angle iron I have been pirating from.

The next task in my FEL mounting project was to create the brace that would attach the top of the uprights to the front of the tractor. I decided to make a part to bolt on to the front frame on the tractor. On the sides of this part will be a hole so that I could bolt a beam from this brace up to the new ears I welded on to the up rights.

It always seems that I never plan far enough in advance. Once I get the idea I just want to make it. The right thing to do would be to design it on paper (or even in CAD!!! I am completely proficient in SolidWorks) and then order the steel and other items and wait until they all arrive before starting. Nope, I need to start now, not having thing right supplies.

I have a length of 1/4" x 1/4" x 3" angle iron, that was about 12 feet long when I first took it from work. It's down to 5' now but still lots of good metal on it. I cut a 16" length off of it and cut and drilled two triangular pieces to weld on the ends. Then I clamped it to the frame and carefully scribed the 4 tapped holes on the front of the frame I would use for mounting. Too mad a have a great set of spotters and transfer punches at work. Never anything at home. So, I was just careful to put a center punch as close as I could eye it.

For the beams to go between the 2 brackets I had to run to HomeDepot. They don't have much in the way of steel for fabricating, but they have a nice selection of steel pipe. So, 1 length of 3/4" pipe was mine.

I cut them to the right size and then heated the ends red with 2 propane soldering torches. the 2 together make it go pretty quick. I then flattened the ends buy squeezing them in a vice. The results?? Pretty darn good. Was just a little tricky keeping the flat planes on each end parallel to each other.

Thanks Paul, I hope to get it all done, but certainly will take some time. I am figuring at some point this summer. My problem is the more I touch, the more I find wrong.

So I had the bucket from the FEL sitting on my motorcycle lift, which worked out great because of it's ease to move it up or down while doing work on it. One of the times I moved it up I noticed one of the cylinder rod seals leaked hydraulic fluid. This was bad because there was barely in pressure in them so that means I should rebuild it. So I opted to rebuild all 4 of them.

After doing a major amount of online searching, I was able to make a few determinations about my loader. I was told only that is was a Johnson, and it came off of a Bolens tractor. After looking at the endless amount of pictures available on the internet, I was very confident I had a Johnson TC-10, also referred to as a Workhorse TC-10. But I also noticed that aside from the mounts, it was 100% identical to a Kubota B219 loader, which would have been the loader that was available for my tractor back in 81-82. So seeing as buying the Johnson seals was a no go as they were long out of business, I opted to buy the seals for the B219 instead. At $17.00 per cylinder, that was a little risky. But, the risk paid off and the the entire seal package fit perfectly.



While I waited for my seals to come in, I turned my attention to the play in my steering. What a disappointment that was. I had read about the adjusting nut to remove some of the play. I had thought my system had far too much play to possibly be fixed with this adjustment nut, but had to go that route first.

By now I had my shop manual and user's manual. So I looked up the location of said adjusting nut and went to the tractor. I looked. Looked at the other side, went back to the first side. I had no adjusting nut. In fact I had no steering box! well, I had a box, and the steering column seemed to go into that box, but it was nothing I ever saw in any of the online pictures I saw. Funny I had never noticed that until now.





After taking this box off my tractor I leaned it was a stock wormgear box that can be bought throgh BostGear.com. Actually quite ingenious, but not good enough for my new tractor!! I started the search for a new steering box. After hitting several dead ends I found Newlands Groundcare http://www.newlandsgroundcare.com/sbox.html Tony over there was very helpful. Although he didn't have a Box for a B7100, he did have one for a B6100. He was very helpful and sold me just the box without the column, since I did have that. And the rest of the rebuild articles I needed. Only downside with the shipping cost from the UK, but that was offset by Tony's service, help and good pricing. I had the parts in 3 days and I was very happy.



So I inserted the new shaft into the new box temporarily and then slid my old column over the top. Wouldn't you know it... too short. Why.....?, the guy before me cut the column shorter when doing his worm gear mod.

Luck was with me that day. I went onto ebay, and there, newly listed is a complete steering box and column from a B7100 for auction. I contacted the seller, asked what he wanted to end the auction now if I buy it imeadiatly via PayPal. Sold. $ 35.00. plus the shipping. I think I got lucky there.

So now I am waiting for the steering column I decided to drain the tranny and filler up with my very expensive Super UDT oil. WRONG. I drained the oil and removed both suction filters. One was like brand new, without a lot of crap on it. It cleaned up in seconds with a little kerosene. There other... well the stainless screen was torn off the bolt. I wondered how long it had been like that. Oh well, I can worry about what was done or not done in the past. I need to make right and keep it right. So I ordered a new one from Messicks.com and it came the next day. (sweet)





After ordering the suction screen, I decided to look into the play in my 3 point hitch. I took all the accessories off exposing the rock shaft itself. What i found was a little disturbing. ( do I see a trend here? Doh!) There seemed to be a large amount of left to right play in the shaft. At first i though this must be wrong. But the more intelligent side of my brain said, " nope, it's perfect. hurry up and put it back together before anyone sees it" The images below show the shaft all the way to the right, and then all they way to theft. Is this wrong???

While all this was going on, I managed to rebuild the cylinders and paint them. I went with black I had to take of orange, red and it original paint which was gold. I stripped them completely clean to the metal.



At this point in my project i made a decision in which many of you may take offense. I opted out of the traditional Kubota tractor colors. Don't get me wrong, the Orange will stay orange. But it's other color will no longer remain blue. I think the blue that my tractor was painted was so hideous, that it has turned me off of blue altogether. The main tractor painting will wait until we have nice weather in the spring. But as of now, every part that i take off the tractor to work on will get a good stripping and repainting. So here the PTO guard.





Here's another to show the new color against the Orange. Under the 1500 watts of light i use in my garage it looks more bronze in color, but it's actually a very dark bronze mix with gunmetal grey. It says 'very tool', 'very mechanical'. It's also lightly textured to it could not be the more perfect paint for a tractor like this. Hides many of the imperfections in the prep. Prep that on a 30 year old tractor is just not practical.

Now my used steering box (which I no longer needed) and my steering column came in. I had to remove the old bearing race from the bottom of the column. The directions on how to rebuild the steering box on the Newlands Groundcare website were a big help, especially the idea of making the tool to remove that bearing race. I used the old steering column, heated the end cherry red, grabbed it in the vice and just bent it 90 degrees. The a just ground it down small enough to knock it under the race and it popped right out.



As you can see the bottom of the steering column was in great shape.



When I paint the tractor in the spring, I have no intention of taking the steering box off, so I sanded and painted that section of the frame before mounting the steering box.



Here we have the newly painted Steering box all assembyed and ready for instalation. NOTE: A B6100 Steering box does not fit a B7100 Frame. The holes on the steering box needed to be drilled out to the next size clearence hole. I think from 8m to 10m. I was worried I might make the flange on the box castings weaker. But, i had the B7100 box to look at and it was exactly the same size as the B6100 box with larger holes. So I just drilled the holes out. Oddly enough, my new steering box has no drain plug. The B7100 box does.



Here is the box installed. Here you can see there is no drain plug. the area where it goes is not drilled or tapped.



Ahh yes, and something I failed to mention. My steering wheel was not the correct wheel for my tractor and to make matters worse it was attached with a 1/8" cotter pin. That was the cause of 75% of the steering play. I bought a brand new Steering Wheel from Messicks. This was unfortunate as I watched Service Dept Vic's video on re-finishing the wheel with a propane torch and wa eager to try this. Oh well. Here's the tractor with the dash back on and the new Steering Wheel attached.