Broken 4WD on B2910

hayden · Sep 25, 2006

Has anyone had the 4WD give out on their 2910/2710 or similar model? My 2910 appears to only be doing 2WD (Rear) no matter which position the selector lever is in. I get only one rear wheel spinning when pushing a load with the loader, and in 4WD I should get at least one front and one rear wheel spinning. The diff lock seems to work OK and forces both rear wheels to spin, but the front wheels are not being driven.

I lifted the front off the ground with the loader and can spin one front wheel while the other remains stationary - yet another thing that shouldn't be possible.

I did notice a grinding/scraping noise while working in a pile of brush, but chalked it ip to a stick rubbing against something. I had ear protectors on so I didn't hear it very well.

I'll be looking into it this evening to diagnose more, but thought I'd check to see if anyone else has run into this. I'm hoping I just blew out a u-joint or cracked a coupler as opposed to having cracked an internal gear in the front or rear case.

hayden · Sep 25, 2006

So far not so good. The front drive shaft spins freely where it enters the front axle. There's also a lot of side to side play where the shaft enters, which I suspect is not good either.

I found one other odd thing which might be what caused the whole problem. One of the bolts is missing for the two brackets that mount the axle to the frame. The result is that the axle is not held square to the frame and wiggles and moves around. Right now I'm suspecting that this movement is what drove it to break in the first place.

Next step is to drop the front axle and start digging until I find broken parts.

hayden · Sep 25, 2006

Well, it looks like this is all the result of shoddy work by my dealer on a previous repair. A year or two ago I took it in to have a grinding noise in the front end looked at. It turned out the front drive shaft cover had been damaged by a branch and was rubbing against the shaft. To replace the cover, the front end needs to be dropped out.

It appears that during reinstallation they managed to cross the threads on one (maybe two) of the axle mounting bolts, and got one of them so jambed up that they just left out the fourth bolt. The nuts are welded to the frame, and it's clear looking at the nut for the missing bolt that it's been cross threaded. I say "maybe two" were cross threaded because one of the other welded nuts was actually broken free and took quite a bit of effort to get off. To get this axle mounted I'm gogin tohave to drill out the damaged nut and free-fit one above it. They are in a location that is inaccessible to a welder so I can't fix it properly (unless I want to remove the engine, which I don't).

Now to the Axle damage. It turns out the input shaft has been sheered right off. I have to believe this is because of the odd angles formed between the drive shaft and input shaft as a result of the axle mount flopping around.

Needless to say, I'm not a happy camper. Now I need to decide whether to have the people who screwed this up in the first place fix the mess they made, or learn the same lesson yet again - namely if you want it done correctly, do it yourself.

This sucks.

Nik · Sep 25, 2006

I would definitely contact my dealer about this. Seems that the prior repair work was substandard. If you do not get a good response from the dealer then perhaps you should contact a kubota rep. You should consider taking photos of their repair work for proof of your claim.

Barnboy · Sep 25, 2006

I would have the dealer look at it. It might not do any good but you never know. I really dont like anyone but me working on my stuff. No one takes the time or care that I do. Can you use a heilicoil. I know what your saying about the welded nut. You cant get in there with a grinder to get the old one off and you cant get in there to weld