What did you do to or on your Kubota today?

[chim]

I sanded the dipstick (enough to make some "grain" visible at about a 45° angle. That made it easier to see the hydraulic oil.

 

[Russell King]

Did a little grading. This area was really bumpy.

Not really sure what the things are really called for the drainfield. They let the pipes drain down after the pump shuts off.

1) Hopefully you recalled joesmith123’s technique for leveling out the dirt!

2) I assume that would be a vacuum breaker (to allow the water to drain back to the tank on one side and into the drain field on the other side)

 

[The Evil Twin]

1) Hopefully you recalled joesmith123’s technique for leveling out the dirt!

2) I assume that would be a vacuum breaker (to allow the water to drain back to the tank on one side and into the drain field on the other side)

Oh boy do I
Thank you!!! For the love of all things holy, I could not come up with the term vacuum breaker! I was thinking air gap....no that's plumbing. Dry break...no that's racing. Man, I'm too young for this

 

[McMXi]

Five inches of snow fell at the shack out in the country and instead of getting to have fun I decided to stay home with "the bug" that's taken down co-workers for a month already (I'm a hold-out) and "rest up" so I get over it. It's another one of those that settles in the sinuses until Spring, and 2-3 months of being sick doing "not much" isn't my style. I've been getting an extra 3-6 hours of sleep a day for the last three days, which when you're used to sleeping 5 hours a day total is a lot to say the least.

Fortunately I get to live vicariously through you and the pictures here, contemplating if an Grand L even makes any sense for my uses. Probably not, but it's still fun to dream.

Hope you get well soon. It took me two months to get over the cough that came with a respiratory bug that did me in the week of January 6th. It's only been a week or two since the coughing fits finally subsided. They were less frequent as the weeks went by, but still really annoying.

As for a Grand L .... heck yeah! With eight models to choose from if you include the LE variants, I bet there's at least one that would make some sense. Dream on ... I know I do.

 

[McMXi]

Sometimes it’s easy just to lay the end of the dipstick on a clean white piece of paper towel.

You can immediately see the level of fluid, costs virtually nothing as you’ll often want to wipe the dipstick off anyway….

I've been trying that and it doesn't help. I even looked at the dipstick using one of my loupes and still none the wiser. I think I'll borrow a dipstick with crosshatching and stuff it part way in the dipstick hole and see if the fluid shows up on that. If it does, I will most likely add crosshatching with one of the very small files that I have.

 

[The Evil Twin]

I sanded the dipstick (enough to make some "grain" visible at about a 45° angle. That made it easier to see the hydraulic oil.

I've blued them with a micro torch. Never thought about sanding. Excellent idea.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

I've been trying that and it doesn't help. I even looked at the dipstick using one of my loupes and still none the wiser. I think I'll borrow a dipstick with crosshatching and stuff it part way in the dipstick hole and see if the fluid shows up on that. If it does, I will most likely add crosshatching with one of the very small files that I have.

If you can't see where the paper towel changes to "wet" there might not be enough light...or, -heaven forbid- you're becoming ancient.

So far I've gotten by drying off the stick with paper towel and using an "everyday carry" (tiny, but extremely bright) LED flashlight held in my mouth to see where the oil glistens, because when the paper towel trick was "possibly inconclusive" I determined the paper towel was too high of quality (not thin enough) and that was my problem--which might also be your problem, too good of towel (not kidding, the cheap stuff turns almost clear instantly).

That yellow plastic is kind of shiny, @chim has a good idea with sanding the surface.

Thanks for the well-wishing, I slept in this morning (again) and will likely try an old remedy tonight to cook it out of me. (Had a bad dream I got hired in the office of a super-strict genetic seed company, suit, tie, and rules about everything, can't carry at work, security scanners, cameras everywhere, you know the type.
I lasted 40 minutes... )

 

[McMXi]

I've blued them with a micro torch. Never thought about sanding. Excellent idea.

I was actually thinking about doing that yesterday.

I don't have a micro torch but do have one of those plumber's torches for sweating copper joints and such. I wrapped the rubber and as much of the dipstick as possible in a wet rag, then heated the end up to cherry red and immersed the end in old engine oil (from the F-250). It's kind of a hard casing process but very low tech. We did this decades ago when I was in welding school, but on a much larger scale.

Now I can actually see the oil level on the dipstick, and yep, I need to drain out another quart or two.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

....I wrapped the rubber and as much of the dipstick as possible in a wet rag, then heated the end up to cherry red and immersed the end in old engine oil (from the F-250).

I was thinking, "How the h311 is that going to work????" and then saw your pictures of a "not yellow plastic" dipstick. It's gotta be rough owning big tractor...gotta be rough...

 

[chim]

Clean up, Clean up. Everybody do his share.........

Dropped a few dead ones. Friend of a friend is taking the big pieces and I'm raking and tossing a LOT of small stuff. Can say with a fair amount of confidence that this kind of work was easier before I was 75

 

[Speed25]

Spent about 4 hours yesterday moving 8 yards of dirt/compost from the street to the back garden yesterday. Gotta say, I love this BX as it fits so nicely through the tight spaces in the woods. While the old L had a good bit larger bucket, it wouldn't have fit in the areas the BX did. I couldn't get up the hills in High gear, so I had to run in Low gear up the steep hills, before shifting back into High in the flatter areas. The backhoe makes for great ballast on the back and the new 2" rear wheel spacers really make this thing much more stable on the off-camber inclines.

While I had the backhoe on, I got the kid on the tractor for the first time to try the backhoe out some. Kid definitely enjoyed it and was surprisingly smooth with the controls. Who said video games were useless??

 

[ajschnitzelbank]

Emptied my buckets for the first time this season. Hopefully I have enough to boil come this weekend.

 

[Gaspasser]

Not a damn thing... With the warm weather (40-50's) this week, mud season is officially here. For the uninitiated, warm climate folks, up here the ground freezes several feet down through the winter. As warmer days arrive, the top layers melt into a mud slurry on top of the frozen deeper
layers. It's like driving on greased ice. Forms deep ruts. Then overnight, refreezes and the ruts harden. No need to steer; just pick your rut and the vehicle steers itself.

The town dirt roads are raked overnight to level out for before they refreeze and to allow for evaporation of water during the day.

Running the tractor in this mess is risky (especially on hills) and coats everything with mud. No point in trying until Mother Nature relents. With good weather, late March early April. In the mean time, dreaming of warmer days.

 

[NordTrac]

Installed some "skates" on the front FEL bucket to leave gravel in place once it starts melting pretty soon.

Tried them for a few minutes. Not real representative conditions (everything frozen solid) but seems promising...

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Well I decided to take the plow off, cleaned it up and covered it with a little bit of silicon spray and greased and then placed it on a plastic pallet for now and swapped it out for the bucket. But before I did that, I plowed the driveway one last time with it. Woke up to a few inches this morning. Probably didn't need to plow but had to do it one more time for a video

Anyways I made a short video today showing how I fill the tractor up. I'm not particularly comfortable being in front of the camera but I'm doing my best.

You do fine and dandy in front of the camera.
Can I give you a small bit of criticism?
You really should never fuel a vehicle indoors, yes I know diesel is not very flammable.

 

[nerwin]

You do fine and dandy in front of the camera.
Can I give you a small bit of criticism?
You really should never fuel a vehicle indoors, yes I know diesel is not very flammable.

Thanks. Decided to delete it anyways. I'm stupid.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Thanks. Decided to delete it anyways. I'm stupid.

WHY, I really did think you did a great job!
The more you do the better you'll get!

 

[nerwin]

WHY, I really did think you did a great job!
The more you do the better you'll get!

it's ok really. You made a great point and I made a terrible mistake and certainly didn't want to put it out there with what I was doing was dangerous. It's something I never considered and I feel really, really dumb.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

it's ok really. You made a great point and I made a terrible mistake and certainly didn't want to put it out there with what I was doing was dangerous. It's something I never considered and I feel really, really dumb.

Redo it tomorrow, just outside and I'll give it a rave review!
I'm really not trying to knock you at all!
I've seen bad things happen refueling equipment, and doing it inside can really accelerate the bad!

 

[nerwin]

Redo it tomorrow, just outside and I'll give it rave review!
I'm really not trying to knock you at all!
I've seen bad things happen refueling equipment, and doing it inside can really accelerate the bad!

Probably not worth pumping the fuel out of the tractor and back into a can and then back into the tractor for a video nobody cares about haha. Maybe next time I need to fill it, I'll give it a try again....outside.

I just feel like a moron because I been filling stuff inside the garage for YEARS. I guess I just been lucky. I do fuel the lawn mower outside though.