I finally made the repairs and improvements to this project. Nothing is ever as easy as it should be but these need a fair amount of attention even without the task of adapting it to a different purpose than it was intended.
Adapted a MIVA Mini Ex Sickle Bar Mower to a Kubota Loader
I wanted to try to adapt this to the loader on my Kubota to maintain property and fence lines where I only have access to one side.
The hose fittings are metric DIN type. I removed one hose and looped the other back to the motor after putting some oil in it to protect it for storage.
I had the tractor ends cut off and 3/8” JIC female swivel ends for ¼” hose installed. After that I had to have a piece of 3/8” hose with pipe ends cut in half and had 3/8” JIC male ends added to that to extend the hoses.
I built a mount that has an adjustable single pivot connected to a 2” square bar. I U-bolted that to a skid steer plate I had made into a set of pallet forks. This will allow me to operate the mower in the upright or flat positions. The unit with my mount weighed 132 pounds and that was accentuated by it hanging off the side. I clamped a couple of 100 pound suitcase weights to the other side to offset and balance the load on the loader and front axle. I had to pump the front tires up to max 34 PSI to keep them from coming lose at the beads. According to my corner weighing scales the loads at the front tires are even but right at max for the tire ratings.
The actuator arm has several flaws. The one I bought had the arm with the bearings scavenged and replaced with one that had damaged bearings. It is designed with two 10X26X8 mm bearings in each end. This one was missing the inner race, retainer clip, and balls on the inner bearing at the motor end. There is a ridge in the bore separating the two bearings at the outer race and it had no corresponding spacer for the inner race. If you tighten the nut that holds the arm on at the motor end it will damage the bearings. I added a spacer the size of the inner race and a large heavy washer outside of that so nothing rubs on the bearings or housing. I put one nut on just flush with the large washer and double nutted it to keep it from coming loose.
On the cutter bar end I welded a piece of metal from the cutter bar to the strap that pushes and pulls it to eliminate the flex that caused that to break. I didn’t like where the cutters aligned at the ends of the pivot travel so I set the cutter points aligned with the guide points and redrilled the holes for the bracket that pushes and pulls the bar with the motor end all the way forward. This seems to result in the cutters moving from point to point and allowing the space in between to be fully open at the ends of travel.
For the bearing pivot at the cutter bar end I replaced the 10mm clevis pin with a 3/8” by 2-1/2” grade 2 bolt. I ground some groves on either side where the pivot rides in hopes it will act as a shear bolt if the cutter binds. I double nutted the bolt and cut the excess off.
I didn’t discover any of this until I ran it and the arm riveted to the cutter bar broke. That only took about 30 minutes of run time. I found a posting on a FB group where people were fixing this issue by welding a support at the end of the bar after welding the bar back in place. Another person suggested running the motor in a clockwise rotation as you are looking at the front of it. That makes sense but won’t completely eliminate the flex that causes it to break. From the factory the bar extends several inches from the first rivet hole and has a lot of flex at the rivet.
At the end of the day this should be a useful tool I will need a couple of time a year and I won't have a bunch of money invested in it.
