What's up with the hose heading to the 3rd-function. It looks kinked but might be a tropical illusion as we used to say in Hawaii.
It isn’t kinked. I’m assuming you’re looking at the place in the first photo near the valve where it looks kind of wrinkled. If yes, there are a couple things going on, neither of which are functional, but both of which are kind of irritating to me. If it’s somewhere else, it’s an illusion of the camera.
The wrinkled look is because there’s a thin strip of plastic about the thickness of Saran Wrap, but somewhat stiffer, that covers the printing on the hose. It’s delaminating from the hose where it bends. Maybe I should pull it off to clean it up, but it’s not a functional issue and that big loop of hose looks like crap to me anyway so some wrinkly plastic wrap isn’t making it any worse IMO.
The other thing is the dealer installed the third function when I bought the tractor new. Being a dealer, I would think they’d have bins of various hydraulic fittings in inventory in their shop. I can only assume the day they installed my third function they went to the elbow bin and it was empty so they thought, “eff it, we’ll just make the hoses longer and have a couple great big loops sticking up over the valve.” At the time, I was so giddy to have a modern 4WD totally functional tractor with a loader and enough power to do what I needed, I wasn’t concerned with a loopy hose. (I think I’ve posted a few pics in the past of the tractor the L replaced, but if you don’t recall seeing it I can post a couple pics and I’m confident my overlooking an aesthetic imperfection will make sense.)
I have intermittently considered cleaning that third function up with elbows to minimize those loops, sleeves for the hoses, and at least one more tie in the middle of the hose run. Being it hasn’t been a functional issue, and it would cost something (albeit not much) to modify, it’s just been a very low priority. Maybe someday.