L2204/LB2202DT Engine Question or Repower Options

[RandR10]

Hello all. I'm a new owner of a Kioti LB2204. This is the Dae Dong version of the Kubota L2202DT that the two companies partnered on. It's a great little tractor and pretty much everything works on it, but the problem is that the engine is toast. It's blowing smoke and oil out the breather and it sounds like one of the cylinders is dead. From what I can gather it's got either a Kubota DH1101 engine in it, or a knock off of that engine made by Dae Dong. I've contacted the dealer about this and they didn't even respond, and nobody seems to have good info on other forums about this tractor, specifically the engine. I figured since Kubota guys are a bit more passionate about the brand and this being the same underlying machine, I'd see if anyone here knows what I'm dealing with.

First question: Does anyone know if this has a Kubota engine or is it a Dae Dong knockoff? If it's a Dae Dong knockoff, will a rebuild kit from the Kubota version of this engine work? FYI, it does indeed have the same 1115cc cast into the block just behind the injection pump just like the Kubota DH1101. I may want to go that route if the internals will swap, depending on what I find during teardown of course.

Second question: I know that a D1402 Kubota engine will drop right in this machine since that's what it came with from Kubota. That, and a member of that other forum swapped one into his LB2204 without issue. Are all of the 3-cylinder Kubota engines interchangeable like this as far as bolt patterns and mounting points? The older engines, even the D1402, seem to be unobtainium, but I've been seeing a lot of D1105's and D905's come up that are in retired pumps, generators and mowers. Either of those would be just fine for me power-wise, I just don't know if they'll work. If I do end up with a Kubota engine in it, would it be blasphemy if I put Kubota decals on the hood?

Anyway, thanks in advance for anyone with good info on these engines.

 

[WRENCH WORX]

Hey, i have factory manuals from kioti for the lb2204 and the kl122 loader. I own one of these machines and its been a great asset. unfortunately my engine failed 2 days ago just as you described yours failed. How did you proceed with the repair? I have a v1305 4cyl kubota engine sitting here, curious if it would bolt up.

Thanks,
-Rowan

 

[RandR10]

I don't know if Kubota kept the same bellhousing pattern as they went to the later series engines, so I don't know if that V1305 will work. I was actually hoping to get that answer here, but nobody responded to my post. Note that the 4-cyl engine is probably going to be about 4-5 inches longer too, so even if it bolts up to the bellhousing, you're probably going to have to make some modifications to a bunch of stuff to make it fit. If I was going to got hat route I would sell the 4-banger and get a 3-cylinder engine. You can find 3 cylinder Kubotas with bigger displacement that that V1305, so I don't think you're gaining much power wise if you go 4-cylinder.

For my engine, teardown revealed a broken piston on cylinder 3 and excessive wear on the other cylinders. I chalk both up to very poor maintenance and maybe some negligence. The piston broke at the ring lands, which I'm assuming is from someone using starting fluid to start it. I was originally thinking hydrolock was a possibility, but the rod wasn't bent so I no longer think that's what happened. They ran it for quite a while with the broken piston too because even though the top and bottom of the piston were intact, some pretty big chunks of ring and piston made their way past, which leads me to believe they were just ground into dust. The excessive wear on the other cylinders on such a low hours engine was from I'm assuming lack of air filter changes. I think the air filter is original to the machine, as was the hydraulic filter. I was actually surprised to see a Napa oil filter on the engine so the oil got changed at least once. Other than some pitting on the bearing material from acidification of the oil and some very minor scoring (not enough to catch your finger nail), all of the bearing surfaces were pretty much pristine.

I have a copy of both repair manuals from the L245 and the LB2204. Before I went forward with anything, I compared the two lists of specifications for cylinder size, bearing journal size, piston pin size, etc. and every spec was identical except that on the Kioti manual they added a digit in the conversion to SAE from metric. I was still a little worried that the internals wouldn't work from the Kubota engine, but I took a gamble and bought a Kubota D1100/1101/1102/DH1101 rebuild kit with new sleeves and standard sized pistons off of eBay since it was so cheap. Everything was pretty much identical. The pistons actually looked like they were cast from the same mold they were so similar.

One thing that didn't work was the valve seals. Since the rest of the engine was in pretty good shape I opted not to put new valves, seats and guides in the head and I just re-lapped the old valves to get rid of the pitting from the bad air cleaner. The valve seals from an early '90s Ford Taurus 3.0L v6 ended up being the right size. They have a rubber rather than steel base, so even though they're made for a smaller valve guide, they stretched over mine and the Ford valve was the same diameter so it worked perfectly.

I actually just finished assembly and dropped the engine back into the tractor a couple of days ago. It runs great. My biggest problem was getting it up to temp to seat the rings properly. Even with cardboard in front of the radiator it took me over an hour of driving it up and down the hill in my back yard to get the oil temp up to 165. When I ran it the day before with no radiator blockage, it never got the coolant up to temp enough to open the thermostat. Weather was in the mid 40's temp wise both times.

I just re-torqued the head bolts and re-set the valves last night. For those interested, all of the head bolts did in fact rotate a little when I hit them with the torque wrench. I was actually surprised because I was told modern head gaskets don't need re-torquing, but this one apparently did. Also, the valves had all tightened up a bit from the first time I set them and I had to back the adjusters off about an eighth turn to get them to 8 thousandths gap cold again.