Hello.
This is my first post on this forum.
I live in Thailand and for the last seven years I have mowed 7200 square metres of lawn (a couple of acres) with a four horsepower Honda push mower. Enough of that pain and suffering. Literally pain. A couple of years ago I ran the little Honda over my foot and nearly lost a toe. I will not bore you with the details but it boiled down to a momentary lack of attention. The sort of accident you think can never happen but can. We have five dogs and as I hopped back to the house, applying pressure to the wound, man's best friends were following me licking up the blood. So, in part spurred by that incident, I am now the new owner of a B6000 four wheel drive. It is a grey import from from Japan. It came as a package deal with an S850 tiller but lacking all parts of the three point hitch.
This website played a significant part in pushing me in the direction of the B6000. I was considering buying new as Kubota have a production plant here but this website gave me increased confidence that the B6000 was the way to go.
I had the choice of two at one dealer. At first glance both looked well used but in reasonable and original condition. After much poking around and testing I chose the one without the leaking head gasket, a ton of play in the steering and a burnt and patched wiring loom. At that stage I thought the one I chose merely had quite a lot of play in the steering and some relatively minor problems.
The senior spanner man pulled the steering box on the chosen one apart. Hammers featured large. A lot of water and a bunch of ball bearings poured out of the steering box. The steering gears themselves looked pretty good for a thirty year old which was good news. The steering bearings were replaced using NSK 15BSW02 bearings. According to the dealer they are a straight swap for the Kubota supplied bearings.
A deal was agreed at just over US$2700 for the tractor and S850 tiller. About the going rate here.
The tractor was duly delivered and after a couple of celebratory laps of the garden my first impression was that it's a brilliant boys toy. Lots of levers to pull. Satisfying tractor noises and, of course, it's orange. Better than that once I nail some tools to it I should get some real work out of it.
A blur of spanner twirling followed. A shame I had not spotted the totally seized brake actuating arm on one brake or the significant transmission oil leak prior to sale. I did not test drive the tractor before sale as I had never driven a tractor and there were some very expensive cars in the confines of the lot. Hand throttle, duff steering and two brake pedals persuaded me not to try it.
I am also pulling the S850 rototiller apart. When I drained the chain case for the tiller shaft about half a litre of oily water came out as opposed to 80 weight gear oil. Further work revealed that both bearings had been spinning in the casing. Damage to the casing is minimal and I am sure I have a Loctite product kicking around that will fix that. The chain, tensioner and sprockets were all in good shape. I could see from the locking tabs that the chain case had been opened before so I guess the chain drive had been replaced at some stage.
So far I cannot fathom out how to remove the opposite (left hand) end of the tiller shaft from the casting/bearing. Perhaps there is a fixing beneath the big oil seal but removal of the seal looks like it will be a destructive process so I am reluctant to do so until I have sourced a replacement seal. If anyone knows how to remove this end of the tiller shaft I shall be very pleased to know.
My plan is to convert the S850 tiller to a cylinder lawn mower. Here is the reasoning and some of the issues:
1. The best rotary deck rear mower readily available here is a crudely constructed item weighing well in excess of 100 kgs. It is clearly designed for a much bigger tractor and looks like it would give a pretty rough cut. The welding is awful. The sheet metal is distorted. It costs more than US$500 and would have to be adapted to suit the B6000s PTO.
2. Ride on mowers are rare and expensive beasts here. An Italian made ride on mower with less than brilliant build quality would have cost around $8000 and spares and technical support would be very poor. The electrics on it made my 70s Ducati look like a paragon of electrical virtue. I have never seen a Kubota ride on mower or a tractor with a mid mount deck here.
3. Using the S850 as the basis for a mower you have a high quality and very robust power delivery system to the mower blades with no belts in the equation. Moreover you have the possibility of changing the rpm of the cylinder mower to some degree as there are chains and sprockets in the equation.
4. The mower cylinder will either be designed and fabricated here or bought in the UK and adapted to fit. I am travelling to the UK next week so I can weigh up what is available there including secondhand If I make the cylinder from scratch it should help that I worked for years as a race car engineer and I can do the design work in Autocad. Most cylinder mowers I have seen have curved blades but I would go for a simpler design with straight blades; possibly removable for sharpening or replacement. Bear in mind that machining and fabrication costs are much lower here than in countries such as the US or UK. Certainly making the cylinders will cost far less than the five hundred bucks the dealer wants for his crude mower. I am mindful that you need to be careful in choice of materials, design and fabrication when you are dealing with fast rotating blades. My ballpark figure for making the cylinder for such a mower is US$100 as a one off.
5. The S850 will probably sit at a different angle to the ground from when used as a tiller. That may require revision to the shielding of the cutting blades for safety reasons.
6. The big rear wheels and legs are missing from the S850 tiller. I envisage the S850 running with relatively small, height adjustable, wheels. Perhaps from a golf cart.
7. I have still to count gear teeth but it looks to me like the tiller rotates at lower than PTO speed. Does anyone know the ratio?
I can see there are a lot of knowledgeable people on this forum and I would appreciate opinions on this cylinder mower plan. If it is fundamentally flawed it would be good to know.
As the tractor will be running on turf and driveways for the vast majority of the time I think I will have to change the tyres and at least two of the wheels as well. My B6000 came with rice paddy agricultural tyres on 12 inch fronts and 14 inch rears. I measured the rolling circumference of those nearly new tyres today and the effective diameters are 21 inch front and 28 inch rear. Using the exact figures I calculated the front/rear ratio at 1.34.
Turf tyres in appropriate sizes are insane money here so I have to look at other ways to make it work. Perhaps car tyres or light truck with a bold tread pattern. Turf tyres must be better but I think the tyres I am considering will be OK on dry turf and on such a surface they must have a larger contact patch than the rice paddy agricultural tyres. .
I have a couple of options on wheels. The first is to take advantage of the fact that Kubota have a production plant here and use wheels from one of their models. I have a price list in front of me and a new 16 inch Kubota six bolt rear rim is US$45. It is a split rim which has its pros and cons. I think the PCD is different to the B6000 but it looks like the hub from the Thai Kubota will fit straight onto the B6000 drive shafts and the Thai hubs are US$15 each. I have to verify some important dimensions including the width of the sixteen inch rims (they take nine inch agricultural tyres) and the dimension across the flats of the hex in the hub but those prices are a pretty strong reason to do so.
My second option for rear wheels is to use pick up truck wheels. Thailand is the world's largest manufacturer of one tonne pick up trucks and going down this route opens up innumerable inexpensive wheel and tyre options both new and used. I would have to make new hubs as most pick up truck wheels are 5.5 inch PCD but making new hubs is affordable and I think the original hub design can be improved. My only doubt over this route is whether I can live with a pair of bling rear alloys on a B6000.
I will probably do a more thorough parts cross referencing exercise with the Thai produced models but such an exercise is complicated by the fact that the Thai models use a different parts numbering system for most parts with only a minority, such as nuts and bolts, using the conventional Kubota parts numbering system. That said I saw plenty of parts that I think I can use. I am pretty sure I can put together the three point hitch for the B6000 using mostly parts from Thai models and other parts such as track rod ends and filters look same-ish..
So that is where I am at with my B6000 after two days of ownership. And thank you to this web site and its contributors for playing a part in my purchasing decision.
This is my first post on this forum.
I live in Thailand and for the last seven years I have mowed 7200 square metres of lawn (a couple of acres) with a four horsepower Honda push mower. Enough of that pain and suffering. Literally pain. A couple of years ago I ran the little Honda over my foot and nearly lost a toe. I will not bore you with the details but it boiled down to a momentary lack of attention. The sort of accident you think can never happen but can. We have five dogs and as I hopped back to the house, applying pressure to the wound, man's best friends were following me licking up the blood. So, in part spurred by that incident, I am now the new owner of a B6000 four wheel drive. It is a grey import from from Japan. It came as a package deal with an S850 tiller but lacking all parts of the three point hitch.
This website played a significant part in pushing me in the direction of the B6000. I was considering buying new as Kubota have a production plant here but this website gave me increased confidence that the B6000 was the way to go.
I had the choice of two at one dealer. At first glance both looked well used but in reasonable and original condition. After much poking around and testing I chose the one without the leaking head gasket, a ton of play in the steering and a burnt and patched wiring loom. At that stage I thought the one I chose merely had quite a lot of play in the steering and some relatively minor problems.
The senior spanner man pulled the steering box on the chosen one apart. Hammers featured large. A lot of water and a bunch of ball bearings poured out of the steering box. The steering gears themselves looked pretty good for a thirty year old which was good news. The steering bearings were replaced using NSK 15BSW02 bearings. According to the dealer they are a straight swap for the Kubota supplied bearings.
A deal was agreed at just over US$2700 for the tractor and S850 tiller. About the going rate here.
The tractor was duly delivered and after a couple of celebratory laps of the garden my first impression was that it's a brilliant boys toy. Lots of levers to pull. Satisfying tractor noises and, of course, it's orange. Better than that once I nail some tools to it I should get some real work out of it.
A blur of spanner twirling followed. A shame I had not spotted the totally seized brake actuating arm on one brake or the significant transmission oil leak prior to sale. I did not test drive the tractor before sale as I had never driven a tractor and there were some very expensive cars in the confines of the lot. Hand throttle, duff steering and two brake pedals persuaded me not to try it.
I am also pulling the S850 rototiller apart. When I drained the chain case for the tiller shaft about half a litre of oily water came out as opposed to 80 weight gear oil. Further work revealed that both bearings had been spinning in the casing. Damage to the casing is minimal and I am sure I have a Loctite product kicking around that will fix that. The chain, tensioner and sprockets were all in good shape. I could see from the locking tabs that the chain case had been opened before so I guess the chain drive had been replaced at some stage.
So far I cannot fathom out how to remove the opposite (left hand) end of the tiller shaft from the casting/bearing. Perhaps there is a fixing beneath the big oil seal but removal of the seal looks like it will be a destructive process so I am reluctant to do so until I have sourced a replacement seal. If anyone knows how to remove this end of the tiller shaft I shall be very pleased to know.
My plan is to convert the S850 tiller to a cylinder lawn mower. Here is the reasoning and some of the issues:
1. The best rotary deck rear mower readily available here is a crudely constructed item weighing well in excess of 100 kgs. It is clearly designed for a much bigger tractor and looks like it would give a pretty rough cut. The welding is awful. The sheet metal is distorted. It costs more than US$500 and would have to be adapted to suit the B6000s PTO.
2. Ride on mowers are rare and expensive beasts here. An Italian made ride on mower with less than brilliant build quality would have cost around $8000 and spares and technical support would be very poor. The electrics on it made my 70s Ducati look like a paragon of electrical virtue. I have never seen a Kubota ride on mower or a tractor with a mid mount deck here.
3. Using the S850 as the basis for a mower you have a high quality and very robust power delivery system to the mower blades with no belts in the equation. Moreover you have the possibility of changing the rpm of the cylinder mower to some degree as there are chains and sprockets in the equation.
4. The mower cylinder will either be designed and fabricated here or bought in the UK and adapted to fit. I am travelling to the UK next week so I can weigh up what is available there including secondhand If I make the cylinder from scratch it should help that I worked for years as a race car engineer and I can do the design work in Autocad. Most cylinder mowers I have seen have curved blades but I would go for a simpler design with straight blades; possibly removable for sharpening or replacement. Bear in mind that machining and fabrication costs are much lower here than in countries such as the US or UK. Certainly making the cylinders will cost far less than the five hundred bucks the dealer wants for his crude mower. I am mindful that you need to be careful in choice of materials, design and fabrication when you are dealing with fast rotating blades. My ballpark figure for making the cylinder for such a mower is US$100 as a one off.
5. The S850 will probably sit at a different angle to the ground from when used as a tiller. That may require revision to the shielding of the cutting blades for safety reasons.
6. The big rear wheels and legs are missing from the S850 tiller. I envisage the S850 running with relatively small, height adjustable, wheels. Perhaps from a golf cart.
7. I have still to count gear teeth but it looks to me like the tiller rotates at lower than PTO speed. Does anyone know the ratio?
I can see there are a lot of knowledgeable people on this forum and I would appreciate opinions on this cylinder mower plan. If it is fundamentally flawed it would be good to know.
As the tractor will be running on turf and driveways for the vast majority of the time I think I will have to change the tyres and at least two of the wheels as well. My B6000 came with rice paddy agricultural tyres on 12 inch fronts and 14 inch rears. I measured the rolling circumference of those nearly new tyres today and the effective diameters are 21 inch front and 28 inch rear. Using the exact figures I calculated the front/rear ratio at 1.34.
Turf tyres in appropriate sizes are insane money here so I have to look at other ways to make it work. Perhaps car tyres or light truck with a bold tread pattern. Turf tyres must be better but I think the tyres I am considering will be OK on dry turf and on such a surface they must have a larger contact patch than the rice paddy agricultural tyres. .
I have a couple of options on wheels. The first is to take advantage of the fact that Kubota have a production plant here and use wheels from one of their models. I have a price list in front of me and a new 16 inch Kubota six bolt rear rim is US$45. It is a split rim which has its pros and cons. I think the PCD is different to the B6000 but it looks like the hub from the Thai Kubota will fit straight onto the B6000 drive shafts and the Thai hubs are US$15 each. I have to verify some important dimensions including the width of the sixteen inch rims (they take nine inch agricultural tyres) and the dimension across the flats of the hex in the hub but those prices are a pretty strong reason to do so.
My second option for rear wheels is to use pick up truck wheels. Thailand is the world's largest manufacturer of one tonne pick up trucks and going down this route opens up innumerable inexpensive wheel and tyre options both new and used. I would have to make new hubs as most pick up truck wheels are 5.5 inch PCD but making new hubs is affordable and I think the original hub design can be improved. My only doubt over this route is whether I can live with a pair of bling rear alloys on a B6000.
I will probably do a more thorough parts cross referencing exercise with the Thai produced models but such an exercise is complicated by the fact that the Thai models use a different parts numbering system for most parts with only a minority, such as nuts and bolts, using the conventional Kubota parts numbering system. That said I saw plenty of parts that I think I can use. I am pretty sure I can put together the three point hitch for the B6000 using mostly parts from Thai models and other parts such as track rod ends and filters look same-ish..
So that is where I am at with my B6000 after two days of ownership. And thank you to this web site and its contributors for playing a part in my purchasing decision.
