RK55 110 Front end loader

[sengli]

Unlike a lot of other guys, I take my FEL off during the summer as I use the tractor mostly for mowing. The alignment is always been off since day one. I have read what everyone else had to say, and the local service guys from RK were a bit amazed how far off mine was when the measured it one day. They acted as if they hadnt heard anything about this ongoing issue. And they really didnt know what to do about it.

 

[DonRybak]

Good morning sengli.......... I probably already know the answer but did the RK folks mention if they were going to mention the bucket issue further up the food chain?

 

[sengli]

well is been a solid year since they were out to my place to look at the tractor for the FEL issue, and a leak I had. They ran it up the ladder to the zone lead tech (covers multi states) and none of them seemed to acknowledge they had heard of heard of the issue before. And nothing ever came of it. I just gave up. They did measure the FEL and the mounting points with a tape measure, and did determine something was off. Kinda suggested that I loosen the bolts on the FEL bracketry and retighten. But I dont know the torque specs for those bolts and there are quite a few.

 

[DonRybak]

I thought you were talking recently about them looking at it. I have mentioned a couple times in the past about trying to align my FEL but like other things it keeps getting pushed aside. Looking at the loader manual it appears there's a left and right frame mount along with a cross brace between them. Those are mounted to the tractor with 4 bolts on each side prior to the FEL.

I'm thinking that if those 8 mounting bolts are loosened slightly with the FEL raised a little off the ground that maybe using a level on the front of the FEL things can be corrected by raising the low side with a bottle jack under the frame mount. Once level then everything can be torqued back to specs. There's a torque chart in the loader manual. Any thoughts?

 

[Johnny D]

Johnny D, what ever happened with this? Curious if you contacted RK...........

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I went to the store where I purchased my tractor and checked out another RK55 and it had the same movement as mine. Tech said it was like that so it would be easier to remove and install. (Not in my opinion)

I'm going to do some type of shimming and tighten things up. When it warms up again.

 

[Btown]

What amazes me that this is the same loader and tractor as the TYM and I have not seen one complaint of the loader level being off. They are the same tractor, just final assembly by 2 different companies. Odd. RK has to correct the issue. I don’t think people are expecting the loader to be completely level, but pretty close.

 

[DonRybak]

Btown, I don't think RK has any plans on doing anything to fix this. I'm pretty sure that the warranty on the loader is only one year and I bought mine in 2018. There are two assembly facilities for RK and everyone that has complained about this, except for sengli, are located in the south where the assembly plant is in Williston, FL. Not sure where sengli's was assembled at. To me that pretty well confirms that it's an assembly issue at that facility. I haven't noticed any new owners chiming in recently with the issue so I'm not sure if they just aren't mentioning it or if maybe the issue has been resolved.