Took almost a month, but I finally got the BX5450 and front quick-hitch I ordered when I bought my new BX25D.
Picked it up from the dealer, and unloaded it from my trailer with the FEL:
Stripped off the FEL and BH to get the tractor ready for the front quick-hitch:
The box the quick-hitch came in had clearly been opened, and the parts bag was cut open, but amazingly, everything was in there. It looks like the dealer must have raided it for parts at some point, but ordered replacements for anything used, and made sure it was "complete" again (some of the parts were in separate bags with individual hand-written part no's). Kudos to them for that.
Some notes for other folks assembling the quick hitch and attaching to tractor:
1) At one point it says to install the nylon pins into the t-bolts after pushing through the hole in the hitch assembly. This is easier said than done. The nylon pins are clearly just cut from a big long piece with a pair of nippers, so they get pinched/deformed at the end. I pointed mine a bit with a file before tapping them in. Without doing that, mine wouldn't go in.
2) You need something to seal the threads for the hydraulic lines. I used teflon tape, and made sure there was none protruding past the threads to avoid any bits ending up in the lines. I made them no tighter than I would fittings for an air compressor, and I have no leaks.
3) This one is obvious when you're assembling it, but can be overlooked when just ordering stuff. All the hydraulics (the lines, cylinder, etc.) will need to FILL with fluid when first attached to your tractor. You will need more HST oil to replace what is lost when this is connected and "filled up" from your reservoir. I was lucky and happened to have some on hand that I had ordered ahead of time for my 50-hr service.
4) The color coding is completely wrong. They provide red and blue plastic rings to put on the hoses but don't bother telling you which gets which color. No worry, because red and blue aren't even the right colors. When connecting to the red/blue quick connects for the FEL, the RPM's would just drop when I activated the valve. When I switched to the white and yellow quick connects, it came to life as expected. Just keep cycling the valves until all the air is purged. The CORRECT connection is from the top of the cylinder to the white quick-connect loader valve, and from the bottom of the cylinder to the yellow quick-connect loader valve.
Once I got the quick hitch assembled and mounted onto the tractor, I moved onto the BX5450:
Assembly was fairly easy, but I encountered the following issues:
1) They provide a vertical riser to hold the manual chute rotator that mounts to the floor under an existing bolt, and through a hole right next to it covered with a tape dot, but the hole wasn't quite lined up with the cast aluminum piece underneath and it was a !@#$% to line it up and get the nut on the bottom. Very little room the way that cast aluminum piece is made underneath. You're also bolting a piece of painted steel right onto the nice painted floor surface. If you ever take it off, no doubt it'll look like hell from vibration, etc. I added a thin piece of rubber between the two surfaces to prevent this. All in all, this looks a lot better then the old hokey setup where a bracket attached to the loader valve bracket itself.
2) The shoe for the snowthrower was a *REALLY* tight fit on the male part of my quick-hitch. I had to raise the blower in the air and rock it down repeatedly until I could close the handle on the hitch, and it was still very hard to close the handle. I'm guessing these surfaces probably loosen up a bit with some wear.
3) The design of how the chute mounts to the body is downright terrible. It certainly *looks* a lot beefier of a mounting method than the pics I've seen of the 2750's, but it's just very poorly executed. I've seen this mentioned in another thread as well, but I couldn't find it again when I looked for it. (EDIT: found it, here: http://www.orangetractortalks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16380&page=4 about 1/2 of the way down)
Here's an exploded view of the chute assembly:
There's a rotation bushing (11) that first gets placed onto the steel body of the blower. Next, you set the chute (1) down on top of the bushing. This is where the trouble starts. The diameter of the inner ring on the bushing is much narrower then the inside diameter of the chute. Before even fastening anything, you can tell the bushing is going to let the chute move horizontally at least 5/32". Next, you attach the retaining brackets (12) over the chute, with the shims (16) under the mounting portion of the retaining brackets. Unfortunately. the shims are much thicker than the combined thickness of the rotation bushing and the rim of the chute, so there's vertical play as well. Probably almost a full quarter inch of vertical play. .
This means when you attach the chute rotator, and hold the rotator as close to the chute as it will go before tightening the bolts (which is what the instructions say to do), it lifts the chute when trying to rotate and binds almost every time. By instead tighting the chute rotator as far away from the chute as possible, it works most of the time, but still binds occasionally.
There's tons of slop in the whole setup, and when blowing snow you can actually see the chute shuddering about in every direction.
I think, at a minimum, the bushing is the wrong size, or the shims are the wrong size.
I've been in contact with Claire from RadTech (who actually makes these units for Kubota), and she seemed unaware of the issue. I made the following quick vid to try and illustrate the problem for their support:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNS6QkgGRLQ
I'm still waiting to hear back from them for an education on assembly (if I'm doing it wrong), or a fix.
4) Lastly, when I lift the unit with the loader valve, the left side comes off the ground over an inch before the right side comes up (on level ground). I'm not sure what's causing this yet, but it's problematic since it's nice to be able to lift the blower slightly when clearing in certain situations, and still clear "evenly". I've watched numerous youtube videos of the previous gen blower (2750), and they all appear to lift and drop evenly. I don't know if something on the housing is crooked, or what. I'll take some measurements tonight.
All-in-all, it seems like a nice unit. Overall build quality is very good, and the construction of the shoes and scraper bar look like they'll provide a good bit of use before replacement is needed. If I can get the chute and level issues sorted, I'm very happy with it.
Here are the full specs for the BX5450 from the manual:
Picked it up from the dealer, and unloaded it from my trailer with the FEL:
Stripped off the FEL and BH to get the tractor ready for the front quick-hitch:
The box the quick-hitch came in had clearly been opened, and the parts bag was cut open, but amazingly, everything was in there. It looks like the dealer must have raided it for parts at some point, but ordered replacements for anything used, and made sure it was "complete" again (some of the parts were in separate bags with individual hand-written part no's). Kudos to them for that.
Some notes for other folks assembling the quick hitch and attaching to tractor:
1) At one point it says to install the nylon pins into the t-bolts after pushing through the hole in the hitch assembly. This is easier said than done. The nylon pins are clearly just cut from a big long piece with a pair of nippers, so they get pinched/deformed at the end. I pointed mine a bit with a file before tapping them in. Without doing that, mine wouldn't go in.
2) You need something to seal the threads for the hydraulic lines. I used teflon tape, and made sure there was none protruding past the threads to avoid any bits ending up in the lines. I made them no tighter than I would fittings for an air compressor, and I have no leaks.
3) This one is obvious when you're assembling it, but can be overlooked when just ordering stuff. All the hydraulics (the lines, cylinder, etc.) will need to FILL with fluid when first attached to your tractor. You will need more HST oil to replace what is lost when this is connected and "filled up" from your reservoir. I was lucky and happened to have some on hand that I had ordered ahead of time for my 50-hr service.
4) The color coding is completely wrong. They provide red and blue plastic rings to put on the hoses but don't bother telling you which gets which color. No worry, because red and blue aren't even the right colors. When connecting to the red/blue quick connects for the FEL, the RPM's would just drop when I activated the valve. When I switched to the white and yellow quick connects, it came to life as expected. Just keep cycling the valves until all the air is purged. The CORRECT connection is from the top of the cylinder to the white quick-connect loader valve, and from the bottom of the cylinder to the yellow quick-connect loader valve.
Once I got the quick hitch assembled and mounted onto the tractor, I moved onto the BX5450:
Assembly was fairly easy, but I encountered the following issues:
1) They provide a vertical riser to hold the manual chute rotator that mounts to the floor under an existing bolt, and through a hole right next to it covered with a tape dot, but the hole wasn't quite lined up with the cast aluminum piece underneath and it was a !@#$% to line it up and get the nut on the bottom. Very little room the way that cast aluminum piece is made underneath. You're also bolting a piece of painted steel right onto the nice painted floor surface. If you ever take it off, no doubt it'll look like hell from vibration, etc. I added a thin piece of rubber between the two surfaces to prevent this. All in all, this looks a lot better then the old hokey setup where a bracket attached to the loader valve bracket itself.
2) The shoe for the snowthrower was a *REALLY* tight fit on the male part of my quick-hitch. I had to raise the blower in the air and rock it down repeatedly until I could close the handle on the hitch, and it was still very hard to close the handle. I'm guessing these surfaces probably loosen up a bit with some wear.
3) The design of how the chute mounts to the body is downright terrible. It certainly *looks* a lot beefier of a mounting method than the pics I've seen of the 2750's, but it's just very poorly executed. I've seen this mentioned in another thread as well, but I couldn't find it again when I looked for it. (EDIT: found it, here: http://www.orangetractortalks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16380&page=4 about 1/2 of the way down)
Here's an exploded view of the chute assembly:
There's a rotation bushing (11) that first gets placed onto the steel body of the blower. Next, you set the chute (1) down on top of the bushing. This is where the trouble starts. The diameter of the inner ring on the bushing is much narrower then the inside diameter of the chute. Before even fastening anything, you can tell the bushing is going to let the chute move horizontally at least 5/32". Next, you attach the retaining brackets (12) over the chute, with the shims (16) under the mounting portion of the retaining brackets. Unfortunately. the shims are much thicker than the combined thickness of the rotation bushing and the rim of the chute, so there's vertical play as well. Probably almost a full quarter inch of vertical play. .
This means when you attach the chute rotator, and hold the rotator as close to the chute as it will go before tightening the bolts (which is what the instructions say to do), it lifts the chute when trying to rotate and binds almost every time. By instead tighting the chute rotator as far away from the chute as possible, it works most of the time, but still binds occasionally.
There's tons of slop in the whole setup, and when blowing snow you can actually see the chute shuddering about in every direction.
I think, at a minimum, the bushing is the wrong size, or the shims are the wrong size.
I've been in contact with Claire from RadTech (who actually makes these units for Kubota), and she seemed unaware of the issue. I made the following quick vid to try and illustrate the problem for their support:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNS6QkgGRLQ
I'm still waiting to hear back from them for an education on assembly (if I'm doing it wrong), or a fix.
4) Lastly, when I lift the unit with the loader valve, the left side comes off the ground over an inch before the right side comes up (on level ground). I'm not sure what's causing this yet, but it's problematic since it's nice to be able to lift the blower slightly when clearing in certain situations, and still clear "evenly". I've watched numerous youtube videos of the previous gen blower (2750), and they all appear to lift and drop evenly. I don't know if something on the housing is crooked, or what. I'll take some measurements tonight.
All-in-all, it seems like a nice unit. Overall build quality is very good, and the construction of the shoes and scraper bar look like they'll provide a good bit of use before replacement is needed. If I can get the chute and level issues sorted, I'm very happy with it.
Here are the full specs for the BX5450 from the manual:
Last edited:
