L185 front bumper, hook attachment thing

[Oil pan 4]

Is the front bumper tow hook actually used with any other accessories?
I removed mine and found the 5 bolts that hold it on are a bit of an odd size, 12x1.5mm. They got a little rusty so the threads on the bolt were chewed up, so I ordered new stainless replacement flange bolts and a 12x1.5 tap to chase the holes.
I don't see any reason to keep the bumper, plate, hook combo so I thought I might replace it with a 2 inch square tube Reese hitch plate.
I could put my Reese winch on there, build a little bumper bar for it, put a 2-5/16 ball hitch and move a trailer , stuff like that, actually make it useful.

 

[Greg8352]

2 inch ball. More useful.

 

[Dave_eng]

Likely your charging system would not support very much winching.

Dave

 

[SidecarFlip]

...and stainless bolts won't be that strong either.

 

[Russell King]

The front bumper is actually for carrying weights to stabilize the tractor when you have an implement on the rear of the tractor.

And there are a lot of bolts that size on the tractor. Kubota seems to love extra fine thread bolts.

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[Oil pan 4]

5 or 6 twelve mm bolts should be plenty strong enough even if pot metal grade A bolts.

Likely your charging system would not support very much winching.

Dave

Got a GM SI12 alternator.
I really hope to not need it very much.

 

[Oil pan 4]

I found a picture of one with a weight bumper.
Definitely not what mine is.

 

[Russell King]

Please post a picture of what your bumper looks like.

When I got my tractor. The weight rack was damaged by running into a tree probably and had a strange rectangular cast iron weight bolted onto it using all thread rods. The weight was attached to two vertical pipes welded on that I have no idea what they are used for but they look factory. The holes in the weight did not really align with the pipes. The weight is odd since it is party hollow on bottom like it stacks on something but the top is flat so two of these would not stack together.


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[PitViper]

Please post a picture of what your bumper looks like.

When I got my tractor. The weight rack was damaged by running into a tree probably and had a strange rectangular cast iron weight bolted onto it using all thread rods. The weight was attached to two vertical pipes welded on that I have no idea what they are used for but they look factory. The holes in the weight did not really align with the pipes. The weight is odd since it is party hollow on bottom like it stacks on something but the top is flat so two of these would not stack together.


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Sounds like the top weight from a weight machine weight stack.