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The reducing elbow is goofy, and the whole setup is marginal. Looks like plumbing has been added w/o unions, and the wiring is completely unprotected. There should be a check valve just off the wellhead, and a pressure relief valve. If the pump's only down 100 feet or so and drop tube is 1"...

You need to remove the cover that hides the joystick mechanism. The problem is most likely a bolt in the linkage between the joystick and hydraulic valves that has unscrewed. I had the same problem on my L39 backhoe joystick a few weeks ago. It got less responsive for a minute or so, and then...

Weather, although the owner's manual does not say much about it, most people here recommend that you try NOT to use the foot clutch. It is reportedly a lot less durable than the wet (automatic) clutch. I confess that I often forget; 45 years of habit is hard to unlearn. The only time you...

Love my L39. Six foot is a good size for box blades or angle blades behind L39. I take it your tractor does not have "top 'n tilt" hydraulics? Of the three functions... raising or lowering one side of the blade, adjusting top link length and raising or lowering scarifier teeth, the latter...

Even better with fork extensions...

Good to hear from you, curtisfarmer. I know that you are a L48 proponent. Excellent point about comparing the light commercial TLB series with L or Grand L. They are designed for completely different tasks. No cruise control, no cab, but man, can they dig! On the day that I bought the L39...

Good point about the backhoeless backhoe! The L48 seems to get rave reviews regarding the hoe, but some folks really dislike the 3-range HST. I haven't driven one, and that's one of the reasons I posted the question. I wouldn't hesitate a bit recommending the L39 w/o hoe as a loader/scraper...

Hi, friends! I'm looking for advice again. I have an L39 TLB, and I've been really impressed with this tractor. Over 100 hours use in the past six months, and that's just weekends. 250 hours in two years. But the backhoe is too difficult to remove and replace. One pin is apparently...

BX, I think the chambers are more expensive than the traditional 4" perf pipe and 3' wide gravel bed, but maybe not by too much. The labor saved by not handling the gravel and not having to cover it with cloth, straw or paper is significant. I used the traditional system thirteen years ago...

The old septic tank was still about half full, so I needed to empty it out before I tried to pull it out of the ground. The L39 backhoe did a pretty good job of bailing the yucky stuff. I kept the breeze at my back. The fellow who was helping me was putting a new roof on the garage, which...

Attached (I hope) are a couple of pictures of my L39 at work on a "fixer-upper" house I bought. The L39 has been enormously useful; I've put nearly 100 hours on it since August. Mostly moving junk, but I had to find the old septic system, which took a lot of digging, and I had to replace it...

I'm a bit puzzled by your comments about the septic tank. On the ones I've looked at, there are two chambers; inlet and outlet. Most of the sludge stays in the inlet chamber. The second chamber is fed from the top of the first chamber. It outputs (mostly) water to the leach field. After...

I'd be checking/changing the air filter. The dark exhaust indicates that the engine is getting plenty of fuel, but maybe not enough air. Goodlookin, have you been doing a lot of dusty work? -Karl

You're in for an adventure. What works best for me is to keep the level of dirt in the box constant. I make tiny corrections with the 3-pt. control as I see the fill in the box start to rise or fall. Big corrections make huge humps or dips behind you. If you can't move the control with one...

ihfarm, we need a picture of the guts of your pump in order to suggest solutions. If the shaft is removable from rotor, then replacement of shaft would be easy. If the shaft and rotor are inseparable, then building up the shaft via welding might be required. If the shaft isn't too badly...

Thanks to TBN, and especially Muleskinner, I fixed the stiff position control on my L39 3-pt. hitch today. I posted a gripe about a month ago because my 3-pt. hitch control was so stiff that I had to whack it with my hand in order to budge it. Muleskinner PM'd me almost immediately, but I...

The link posted above covers things nicely. You may find that raising the rear tires a little USING THE HOE is essential. I'm not sure that using the stabilizers will release the pins completely. If you only use the stabilizers with the backhoe bucket raised, there's still all that weight...

If the M59 is anything like my L39, the secret is to use the backhoe to raise the rear wheels of the tractor off the ground a little. Not the stabilizers, but the hoe itself. That's what it says to do in my manual, but it isn't emphasized enough. Once I got both rear wheels off the ground...

A tricky problem! I'm thinking that the biggest hazard (other than the obvious one of having the bigger tree fall on you) is that the maple may split when you begin cutting it. I'd be tempted to wrap multiple turns of nylon strap around the trunk just above and below where I was going to cut...

The 3-pt. control lever on my L39 is very stiff. Didn't notice until I removed the backhoe and installed the 3-pt. hitch arms. The lever drags against one side of its slot, but I can cope with that by pulling the lever to the opposite side. I squirted a little oil on the point where the...

I doubt that there are brass/bronze bushings in the front axle of either tractor. But if there were, then GL-1 should still be okay. GL-5 can cause problems with copper-containing bearings. I'm reasonably sure that what I observed was tiny air bubbles, seen through the amber lubricant...

Costs ten cents a gallon more to have it delivered. And there's always the concern about whether the driver will refuse to deliver if my setup is not quite up to current EPA or OSHA standards. You know, grounding cables, catch pans, ports to fill from bottom instead of top, etc. -Karl

Not quite sure which application you're referring to, Frank. I'm using ATH in the transmissions of both tractors, but the transmissions act as the fluid reservoir for the hydraulics also. The loaders and the 3-pt. hitches on both tractors and the backhoe on the L39 are all fed from the...

Don't have a picture handy, but I started out with a 115 VAC Northern Tools diesel pump on a 55 gallon drum about ten years ago, and have graduated to the same pump on a 335 gallon propane tank converted to diesel storage. I buy new fuel about once a year. Load the empty tank on my F350 dually...

The L39 manual states that UDT or SUDT or 80W90 gear lube is good in the front axle. So I used Amsoil ATH, which is equivalent to UDT. The L2950 manual says to use 80W90, so that's what I put back in it. I was tempted to use ATH, but I have the old style seals on top of the bevel gear...

I drained the front axle of my L39 a week or so ago and replaced the lube with Amsoil ATH, which is the synthetic equivalent of Kubota UDT. The 50 hour old lubricant appeared to have lots of small particles in it; I could see swirl patterns in the draining fluid. Looked like tiny flakes of...

Guess I'm a little confused. I bought a new (probably one year old) L39 in December, and it was tractor s/n 53596. What's this serial number 6000 stuff? I'd have to agree that a loss of two or three horsepower would be insignificant. I've only bogged the L39 engine down once or twice. Using...

Reasley, the only problem I have with your suggestion is that pallet jacks have those little wheels out near the ends of the forks, so the forks themselves can be much weaker than real pallet forks. On my pallet jack, they appear to be sheet metal instead of solid steel. I would expect a set...

Hi, I have a question regarding efficient loader operation. On most loaders, including that on my L39, the lower left option (joystick pulled back and left) is blanked out on the decal. The first paragraph in the Kubota manual on Operating the Loader explains this... "however the blank...

Dave, $2K for a working tractor and a bunch of implements is way low. I'd start at $3K for tractor, and add in some money for each implement. Tools that work are worth some money. -Karl