gpreuss
New member
Lifetime Member
Equipment
L3200DT w/FEL, K650 Backhoe, 5' Rotary, 40" Howard Rotavator, 6' Rhino blade
Over the weekend I decided to make my old K650 backhoe work on my new L3200. When I bought the L3200 I had the dealer give me a hydraulic port in the back, just for this.
The old K650 was a pretty sorry excuse for a backhoe attachment. It is a 3PH implement. The 650 uses a PTO pump and reservoir; the K600 uses tractor hydraulics. Kubota put a bar across the 3PH arms to stop the attachment from rising too high while digging. I believe it was the first time I used it 35 years ago that the bar bent my hitch arms. The stabilizers originally just went straight down from the bottom of the attachment to the dirt, and were a joke. So I built support bars from the hitch arm connections back to the tractor 3rd point of the hitch to secure the implement to the tractor. About the same time, I built my own “real” stabilizers.
Getting the hydraulics hooked up was always a chore, when I was younger. Now it is a genuine pain in the butt. The PTO adapter fell off the pump mid way through the initial line-up attempt. So the first thing to go was the reservoir and pump. Then, two trips to local hydraulics houses for hose extensions and Kubota (DIXON) quick disconnects later, I sort of had a working stand-alone hoe.
The next major problem was that the L3200 has longer hitch arms than the old L185DT does. So the upper hitch arm had to be lengthened, and the home made support bars no longer reached back to the 3rd hitch point. Some clever drill press work and hitch geometry adjustments solved the problems.
Once attached to the tractor we went out to dig a rock and try it out. The rock turned out to be bigger than anticipated - 500-600lbs! My son was digging, and didn’t know about the Kubota swing system. They wrap a chain and sprocket around the backhoe king post, and slide the chain ends right or left to make the arm swing. I’ve probably broken the chain a dozen times in the past. He got the rock swinging, and simply stopped. First try, first chain. While putting in a master link, I noticed that the chain draw bar is broken right at the edge of the weld I made the last time it broke!
Another trip to the hydraulics dealer, and now I have flow restricters limiting (read, SLOW) the swing speed. So I have to seriously degrease it, replace half a dozen hoses, redo half a dozen broken welds
and put on a coat of Kubota Orange paint.
Probably my next project will be to do something with the swing system. Building a new draw bar will be easy, but I want to work in two hydraulic cylinders like they do on the newer ones. I’ll probably have to limit travel to about 150 degrees to make a couple of cylinders do the job - but that will be another story.
The old L185- the tractor the backhoe was designed for - weighed in at about 1850 lbs. The L3200 starts at 2600, and has a full load of rimguard in the rear R4s. It is gratifying and shocking to watch the K650 hoe jerk the tractor around; it lifts the tractor back end about like the mechanical bull throwing John Travolta in one of those old movies.
The old K650 was a pretty sorry excuse for a backhoe attachment. It is a 3PH implement. The 650 uses a PTO pump and reservoir; the K600 uses tractor hydraulics. Kubota put a bar across the 3PH arms to stop the attachment from rising too high while digging. I believe it was the first time I used it 35 years ago that the bar bent my hitch arms. The stabilizers originally just went straight down from the bottom of the attachment to the dirt, and were a joke. So I built support bars from the hitch arm connections back to the tractor 3rd point of the hitch to secure the implement to the tractor. About the same time, I built my own “real” stabilizers.
Getting the hydraulics hooked up was always a chore, when I was younger. Now it is a genuine pain in the butt. The PTO adapter fell off the pump mid way through the initial line-up attempt. So the first thing to go was the reservoir and pump. Then, two trips to local hydraulics houses for hose extensions and Kubota (DIXON) quick disconnects later, I sort of had a working stand-alone hoe.
The next major problem was that the L3200 has longer hitch arms than the old L185DT does. So the upper hitch arm had to be lengthened, and the home made support bars no longer reached back to the 3rd hitch point. Some clever drill press work and hitch geometry adjustments solved the problems.
Once attached to the tractor we went out to dig a rock and try it out. The rock turned out to be bigger than anticipated - 500-600lbs! My son was digging, and didn’t know about the Kubota swing system. They wrap a chain and sprocket around the backhoe king post, and slide the chain ends right or left to make the arm swing. I’ve probably broken the chain a dozen times in the past. He got the rock swinging, and simply stopped. First try, first chain. While putting in a master link, I noticed that the chain draw bar is broken right at the edge of the weld I made the last time it broke!
Another trip to the hydraulics dealer, and now I have flow restricters limiting (read, SLOW) the swing speed. So I have to seriously degrease it, replace half a dozen hoses, redo half a dozen broken welds
and put on a coat of Kubota Orange paint.Probably my next project will be to do something with the swing system. Building a new draw bar will be easy, but I want to work in two hydraulic cylinders like they do on the newer ones. I’ll probably have to limit travel to about 150 degrees to make a couple of cylinders do the job - but that will be another story.
The old L185- the tractor the backhoe was designed for - weighed in at about 1850 lbs. The L3200 starts at 2600, and has a full load of rimguard in the rear R4s. It is gratifying and shocking to watch the K650 hoe jerk the tractor around; it lifts the tractor back end about like the mechanical bull throwing John Travolta in one of those old movies.
