Kubota B21 PTO quit working

[GaryInWA]

I have a Kubota B21 loader/backhoe with 950 hours on it that I was using to power my 4 foot brush hog for field mowing. I have used the brush hog before without any issues and was mowing just fine then all of a sudden it quit mowing. I thought I had broken the pto shaft shear pin but the pto shaft was no longer spinning. The tractor stills goes forward and reverse just fine.

I checked all the levers, electrical connections, etc but could not find any problems?the pto shaft spins easily by hand in either direction even if the pto is engaged.

I decided to change the hydraulic fluid and noticed a broken c clip was lodged in the larger of the 2 hydraulic filters?this cant be good. I dropped the hydraulic fluid pan/tank and thankfully didn稚 find anymore bits and pieces of metal. I was hoping that by removing this pan it would provide access to the tranny (like a car's tranny) but no such luck.

I have the parts manual which shows an exploded view of the pto shaft/housing and see there are four c clips located on various points of the pto shaft?I am probably asking the obvious but could one of these be the culprit and if so do I need to split the tractor in half in order to get to the pto shaft and replace the c clip or can I possibly get to it by removing the pto shaft where it exits the machine?

If I were to take it to a Kubota dealer how many hours of labor would it require to split the tractor,replace the c clip and put everything back together again?

Any advice/ideas are appreciated.

 

[Carl_NH]

Gary,

I wish it were simple but now you know its not.. I have a B21 and follow the threads here and Dfkrug did a complete B21 back end rebuild with lots of pics and details about 3 years ago so you might want to search on B21.

Looking at my B21 it you have access below the seat/lift arm cover to the top of the tranny but the PTO engagement is from the bottom of the housing under the main drive so it may require a breakdown.

I would hope its one of the linkages c-clip if you are lucky or if its a shaft clip (1") you might be able to replace it from the top.. I would start with the top cover and go from there.

 

[mohican]

Hey Gary -

This sounds like something that happened to me with my LK3054. Turns out that it the shifter fork snapped and would not allow the PTO to engage. I am unfamiliar with your model, but they may be similar.

I had to drain the tran fluid and and undo all the housing to access the PTO area. Once I did the actual insertion took 5 minutes. Then I had to reseal teh area, allow it to dry and refilled with fuid teh next day.

The PTO was $22 and teh fluid about $50. Time - 2-3 hours to open and reseal.

Good luck. Hope its a simple fix.

 

[GaryInWA]

I decided to dig into my non-working PTO problem, so I removed the seat and all linkages then removed the access cover over the rear axle housing and the cover that access's the 2ND/3RD and 4TH shafts and noticed one of the gears in the middle was flopping around and sure enough its the gear that gets engaged when the PTO is engaged.

I was able to pull the gear out through the top and took some pictures of it, I will order a new one as its a little chewed up. I also attached a copy of the parts manual page that shows the location of the gear and cir clip that were bad.

I really dont want to split the tractor to replace a c clip but I need to pull the HST forward in order to access the gear shaft and install the cir clip that was destroyed. Who the heck designed the transmission this way?

Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this without the need to split the tractor?