What a Deal! B8200

[whodat90]

When I first moved to my new place (6 acres) I picked up a B7200D with a 5' RFM for mowing duties. 1000 hours, and never a problem other than a dirty fuel tank (how quickly I forget; also had to split the tractor to replace the transmission shaft pilot bushing and replaced the clutch while I was in there). After two years of that I realized that was madness, sold the RFM and picked up a Grasshopper 721 frontmount. Much better. This, however, left me with a turf-tired tractor with no loader; not exactly useless, but certainly not often used anymore. I wanted to replace it with a slightly larger tractor with ag tires and a loader. Looked for most of a year, then ran across a B8200D with a BF300A loader. Bought it, brought it home. Even came with a rather ragged 52" rear finish mower. So far, I have:

Changed the hytrans fluid once and cleaned the strainer. Fluid was seriously waterlogged, and the hydraulics were nearly unusable. Draining and cleaning again this weekend to get the last of the old stuff out.

Changed the engine oil and filter.

Ordered two new front tires; the ones on it were 2-ply, and the manual I got off ebay specified 4-ply due to the loader.

Bought an operator's manual off ebay.

Bought a new battery; old one was junk. Still have to weld up a new battery tray as the old one was corroded away.

Bought and installed a new rectifier/regulator, as the old one failed.

Cleaned and lubricated everything, including drilling and tapping for new grease fittings on the loader bucket pins as they had broken off.

Adjusted the brakes.

Tach didn't work, hours were at 247. Ordered and installed a new tach cable. Tach still didn't work. Looks like the cable rusted and broke, and when it continued to not turn it chewed up the gears in the tach drive gearbox. Going to order that later today.

Replaced rear lights with tractor supply models; originals were broken.

Ordered fog lights to mount on rops to replace broken headlights.

Ordered new loader stand arm, one was missing.

Replaced various and sundry clips, pins, etc.

Here's the fun bit; after a day or so of operating it started to make a wierd popping through the intake. I figured sticky lifters, and made plans to run some motor flush through the engine. Before I did, I decided to pull off the valve cover to see which one was sticking. Turned out that the end of the decompressor rod (~1/2"d steel rod that roatates to hold the exhaust valves slightly open to assist in cold weather starts) had broken off and rattled around till it laid on top of two intake valves, bending the lifter rods. Ordered two new ones (less than $5 each!) and beat the old ones flat with a hammer and reinstalled to use till the new ones arrived. Ya gotta like that kind of serviceability.

So now I have to sell the 7200, but when all is said and done I'm still happy with the 8200. It needs a bit of love but what doesn't?

Does anyone know of any gotchas on the 8200, or happen to know the lift specs on the BF300?

whodat

 

[dfkrug]

Wow, that's a lot of work on a neglected tractor! I hope you
did not pay much for it!

Downsides of the B8200: no power steering, dry external brakes
(are they working?). By the later 80s, it seems that most
machines got PS and wet brakes.

As for the BF300, the naming conventions at Kubota seem to
indicate that that loader lifts 300 kilos. That's my guess.

 

[whodat90]

I paid $4500 for it. The way I look at it, that's like buying a loader for the 7200 and getting a tractor for $1000-$1500. Roundabouts here, (northern virginia) you can't even look at a tractor with a loader for less than $6K, lots of people buying up BXs and little JDs as $15K lawn mowers. That said, I knew most of what I was getting into with it from my B7200D. They're both gear drive (three range on the 8200, two range on the 7200) manual steering basic tractors. Same engine even, although different power outputs. At least the 8200 has ports on the hyd block specifically for a power steering system, so I may be able to jimmy something up.

Oh yeah, when I first got it the brakes were pretty much inop. It was entirely due to misadjustment and disuse, I adjusted them and they work great now, albeit a touch grabby. I figure they'll loosen up a bit with use.

One more thing, the bucket has quite a smile. Any easy way to straighten that? If I had a steel I beam and a bottle jack and some chains, I'd use them but I don't so I can't. I was thinking of taking the bucket off and reinstalling it upside down so the bend section faces forward, then drive up to one of the many immovable rocks on my place and curling the bucket forward.

 

[whodat90]

Well, quite a few more hours on the tractor, mostly loader work. It's worked just fine, starting with 45 seconds of glow plugging down to 17*f. (The owner's manual for my B7200 with the same engine says to use 30 seconds of glowplug every time, and longer in cold weather) That day it did take about 5-10 minutes of fast idle to get the hydraulics to work though. Straightened the bucket with some creative chain/hilift jack/timber work. Braced the bucket and added hooks, and got most of the electricals worked out. Also ditched the stock seat and installed one of the universal seats from TSC, the one with the shock absorber. Kind of a pain to mount, but worlds better as far as comfort.

Oh yeah, specs on the BF300: ~700lbs ASAE rated, ~70" lift. Don't know how close to those specs it actually gets, but it fairly easily lifts a full 6cu/ft bucket of gravel.

Edit: FWIW, the MSDS for crushed stone says it has a specific gravity of 2.55-2.8. My my (suspect) figgerin', that puts it at ~160lbs/cuft, making a 6cuft bucket 960lbs. The caveat is that I don't know if the 2.55-2.8 applies to individual aggregates or the aggregate within a specific volume, so take it for what you will. Either way it seems that it lifts a lot more than I can.

 

[whodat90]

I don't know if it's more a case of foot-in-mouth or simply speaking too soon. I had mentioned that I needed to buy a new tach drive gearbox. No problem, $30 and a couple days and it gets here. Yesterday I decide to put it in. 4 nuts on studs, no big deal. Can't quite get the wrench in there easily, so I pull the loader off. Still not enough room, I pull the side panel off. Now I get the nuts off, but there's a rigid metal coolant hose with two tabs that also share those studs. Not enough room to pull it off. I loosen the clamps, still not enough room. I try to get it to rotate, not quite. Try to pull the tube out, can't because it's almost a press-fit between the engine and the radiator. During this time I also bend some of the wire clamps. I decide to go ahead and drain the coolant, no big deal. Then I grab my handy knife and cut the bottom radiator hose, which of course also cuts the hose behind it. At least now I can finally get the tube out, which gets me enough room to replace the tach drive gearbox. I make 4 trips to the kubota dealer to get different parts, hoses, etc. All this time, I'm working in the back yard by the door. If I leave the door open even a little bit, the chickens and turkeys all run in the house. If I have the door closed, then the turkeys wait till I put a bolt/nut/washer/whatever down, then run up, grab it and run away with it on the off chance that it may be food. Good thing I have a large supply of spare metric hardware. Anyway, I end up having to take off the hood, both side panels, the front loader brackets, the front hood/grill mount, and sundry. Then I have to pull the radiator off, so I can replace the hose. Remember, just 4 nuts, originally. I replace all the hoses, put the radiator back on, fill it up with new coolant, and start putting the rest on. After about 5 minutes I notice that the radiator is now leaking. Drain it again, take everything back off, take the radiator off, there's a crack where the drain cock comes out of the bottom tank. So I clean it all off, braze it back together, and yet again put the radiator back on. Fill it with coolant, watch it for leaks for a while, then went and tilled for a bit to get the engine hot. Once I had verified no leaks, I finished putting everything back together. In short, those 4 nuts took a day of work, replacing all of the cooling system hoses, flushing and refilling the coolant, and putting on a new radiator cap. That said, it's probably something I was going to do anyhow, just as a maintenance item. But the tach works now.
whodat

 

[murky]

I'm glad I didn't read this before I bought the new tach drive for mine, or I never would have done it.

I needed to drain my radiator and replace the hoses and fan belt anyway, so it wasn't as huge a bother. I didn't take off anything associated with the loader. The hardest part of the whole operation was lining the radiator up to put it back in.

My radiator got pulled twice too, but in my case it was because I forgot to put the fan shroud in the first time.