Paying the orange tax. Kubota B7100D

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

I did have a larger beam, I think that's only a W6xsomething that I used. Maybe it would have been better to use the larger one. It hadn't sat around for as many years though, so no sense using it first.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Had this thing back in the shop for some other stupidity. Took them time to kink up some pipe to hang weights on the box blade. I had some spare bike handle grips from another project, so I put them on the ends so I don't impale myself.

Apparently I threw out most of my scrap rotors though.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

I do use this to move my utility trailers around quite often, and I just had a crappy hitch I'd bolt to the bucket to do that. It wasn't great. I figured I'd finally upgrade that by making a more proper receiver that could easily bolt on and off the bucket. It's just a PA hitch with some angle iron welded to it, and the 4 bolt pattern was already torch cut into the bucket.

I also welded up the big cracks in the loader while it was inside. Mostly. It's not cracked there anymore, the paint just didn't stick to the dirt. I did not weld up all the way around as the hydraulic lines were in the way, and that was not a project worth taking on at that time. It's probably been cracked for 20 years, it will be fine until at some point (never) I pull the whole loader apart to redo the pin holes and hydraulic lines and add some gussets to the repairs.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

The other thing I wanted the hitch for was to attach an auger. This is one of those ideas that on paper is trash, and in reality is not any better. I knew that going into it, but desperation, lack of mental acuity, and curiosity about things that will potentially get you killed in interesting ways, lead to me proceeding with the design (that's stretching the word) and manufacturing of this thing that rhymes with smismortion.

I did weld a chain hook to the hitch first, which is unrelated. I think I meant to weld some loops on for safety chains that wouldn't fit a hook, but obviously I forgot to do that in my excitement about the potential to auger holes in things.

An old TJ driveshaft was sacrificed to make a gimbal mount:

After welds of dubious quality, and multiple raids on my scrap pile:

The throttle is an ATV throttle cable of some sort, off Amazon, that I modded to fit a bike brake lever, and then mounted to a random cut off piece of gas pipe and hose clamped to the loader:

I didn't take a detailed picture of it, but the other end of the throttle is just clamped and pulls the existing throttle on the auger. This is so when you start the auger, you can still pull the throttle on it, without needing somebody to help you. This turned out to be very handy as the auger needed the carb to be retuned every 3rd hole. Not sure why it was being so picky, other than being a piece of Chicom junk.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

This actually worked reasonably okay. Assuming you redefine the word okay to be the same as crap.

Then on the second last hole the tractor rolled back while the auger was in pretty deep, apparently I should get around to adjusting the brakes (well, ordering shoes first), and it turned the auger into a banana before I could jamb it back into gear and get straightened out:

A new auger is like $40-$100, depending on quality. I have one hole left, so I'll probably just dig it by hand.

Overall this was much better than using that auger by hand, as it was a terrifying tool with more than enough torque to dislocate a shoulder. I think if I had done a better job of the fab work, had a better auger and powerhead, and put some bungees on it to limit how it swings around when you're moving to the next hole, it would have actually been a decent tool.

The main issue with these cheaper augers/powerheads is that they can't produce enough speed to evacuate the hole.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Figured I'd fix something else that was really annoying me on this. The top link mount is totally egged out. Also, I think these holes are actually 20mm instead of 3/4", as while this isn't a grey market tractor I suspect they sized it for metric attachments. Or maybe they felt that you'd want lots of play to make it easy to put the pin in. End result is the holes are very sloppy.

The lowest hole, which you'll never use, was still painted inside it. Hence why I think they were actually 20mm. I didn't bother to do anything with that hole, as like I said, you will never use it.

Anyway, I wanted to repair this. Ideally I'd make a whole new mount, but if I'm going to do that then I might as well build the heavy duty mount version, which picks up on more attachment points on the cases, but I didn't really want to do that because... I don't know, I just didn't. I also didn't want to make it too strong, since the risk then is that you do break the cases that it's attached to.

I wound up just blowing the holes over, then putting some pieces of 1x.120" DOM/Hyd tubing in them and welding it together. I think the mount will probably still fail before breaking the cases. Who knows.

The welds look terrible with black paint on them, but they actually aren't. I cut down a 3/4" pin to be the right length to fit nicely. Overall it's much better, the pin goes in with just mild pressure and has no real play. Hopefully I don't wind up having to sledgehammer it back out.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Part of the reason for fixing that was to try to tighten up how this snowblower mounts. Will I actually use the snowblower enough that it matters? Probably not. But it offended me.

However, the real issue with how the snowblower mounts, is the mount on the actual snowblower. I don't really know what happened to this thing that somebody built this top link mount for it, but it's terrible.

This is what I came up with instead:

It's a bunch of random sch40 pipe, and some scrap ends of square tube and flat bar and whatever else. I don't know if I should have attached it to the same mount on the blower as it was before, it may have been meant to go to the hole by the chute. No idea. But it's sturdy like this and shouldn't be an issue. Looking at the commercially available versions of this, they do make them mostly of out flat bar, but just not as poorly as the one on this had been.

Also, the ends on this link were random bits I made on the lathe while trying to make a wheel balancer work for a flywheel. It didn't work, so they were scrap. It's probably 100x stronger than it needs to be.

Threw some random green paint on it, which was included with the Comanche I sold years ago:

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Since I spent some time and effort on this snowblower, I figured I'd actually make sure it was somewhat okay otherwise.

There was a bunch of cracks and place that wore through on it, so I welded them all up:

And one of the auger side bearings was blown up, so I figured I'd order a new one. It hasn't arrived yet, but it's probably a UC206-20 bearing, used in pillow blocks and other fairly standard junk.

Of course, I then realized the reason the bearing failed was that the auger shaft is bent. Yeah, if you rotate it, it wallows around in that hole without about 1/2" of deflection.

So, I guess I have to fix it. Great.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

The right way to fix this would have been to take it apart and try to straighten the shaft, or replace it. I couldn't get it apart because it was too bent, and being realistic, the whole thing is something of a POS anyway and does not justify the amount of parts it likely would require. So I elected to cut the end off the shaft and weld it back on in mostly the right place.

Basically I measured the runout the best I could (it wasn't easy since it was so much and the shaft is pretty floppy), cut the end off the shaft, then drilled the center of the part not removed and tapped it to 1/4 UNF, then I drilled a hole in the cut off part offset from center by half the total indicated runout. Then I could bolt the two pieces of the shaft back together and adjust the clocking until the runout was acceptable. Acceptable-ish.

Yes, it took me two holes to get it right. I was going to mill a slot in it so it could be infinitely adjustable, but the second hole wound up being close enough to get runout to about .020-.030ish. Given the shaft easily deflects, I think this is plenty close, and it's pretty low speed.

Welded it together:

Pretty hack, but we'll see if it works. I will have to adjust the gearbox position a bit to hopefully get it centered up a bit better.