Quality of Kubota Service Manuals

[JerryMT]

I have owned a few tractors in my day so I'm familiar with service manuals for various manufacturers. Admittedly our M4500 is an older tractor( 1978) but my 1954 Ferguson TO-30 had better Owner and Service Manuals than the M4500 Kubota!
I don't know if the newer models are any better but I am appalled and the lack of system descriptions, components locations and service instructions that Kubota puts in their manuals.
My Ford and Ferguson have the best set of service manuals I have ever had.

Anybody else have an opinion.

 

[rbargeron]

I agree - the available documentation for Kubota models from the '70s and early '80s was spotty at best.

To make it even harder, Kubota WSM's have always been more targeted to filling out the service libraries of dealers. They tend to be organized across a chassis series, instead of covering all details of a particular model. For instance there are WSM's that cover only the engines in a series, others cover several transmission types, etc. There are chassis-specific WSM's that cover several models in a series sharing common parts.

In the case of your M4500, there were not always English language WSM's developed until sometime after a model series was introduced in the U.S. market. Intertec made an attempt to produce English versions of the smaller L series but even those were less complete than those available for similar-size U.S. machines.

Many Kubota owners rarely need much beyond owner's books and illustrated parts lists. But luckily there's the internet that helps us fans of older machines do more discovery in places like OTT, TBN, and others. Take care, Dick B