Kubota Cab Progress....

Finally got most of the cab finished. Here is a pic with all the windows in, doors on, latched and painted. The rear windows got tinted Plexiglas, why I don't know, just thought it would look better. BTW, I HATE WINDOW TRIM !

Here's the hinges I made because I didn't like the ones I bought and needed the doors to swing out further than that. Took me about 2 hours to make but allows the doors to be lifted off the hinges to be removed.

Door latches I also made out of some scrap plastic. Have installed a screw in framing and made the other end longer for weight. Have ran it about 12 hrs with the doors NOT flying open, so I guess it works!

Here's the gaps in the doors that I may work on later, but for right now, I left them open. There is a lot more open spots that I thought might need closed up to keep the heat in until........

HEAT !!!

Had bought a electric fan off of ebay that was 12VDC and only 2" thick. Roughly guessed on the distance and thought that would work. Had planned to run it pulling air from motor to cab in winter and reverse it during the summer. A....yeah. That didn't work. Anybody need a fan?

After disassembling the entire radiator section, fan, belts etc etc. found out that it is less than 2" clearance between radiator and water pump. Looked at moving radiator forward a tad because it was just so close, but still wouldn't work. I figured there had so be a better solution so I walked away from it for a few days.

The thought of pushing snow without any heat led me to one last attempt. Acquired a 10" Alum fan off a old AC unit that had the reverse blades of the OEM one. Drilled out the center hole for the water pump and drilled the four holes that would mount it to the pump. The whole time I was reassembling this I was wondering how warm it would be and if so, how hot it would be in summer, because I sure wasn't gonna switch this out every 6 months!

Filled the fluids back up and let it warm up to see the results. Have to say, it seems to work well in a 70 degree garage.

Took it out for it's 1st trial run pushing snow in 20 degree weather and I will have to say, It was pretty damned toasty in there. Even with all the gaps in the door, under the seat and levers slots, it forced me to take my coat off while I was in there. Will have to rate this as a success! The only drawback is there is no control over how much heat comes in the cab. You can increase the throttle and seems like it gets hotter and slow it down and get less. Snow plowing doesn't require too much HP so that works for me. (until summer, still wondering about heat stroke in the cab!)

* Two concerns I do have for the few people who have contacted me about interest in this: First, the alum blade I used was rated for 1700 rpm. Don't know if running this above that will cause much problems but have kept my eye on it and looking for any cracks or any other signs of failure. Second, the battery sits right behind the radiator on the inside of cab. I'm sure blowing hot air on it might not be the best thing for it and have frequently checked it for water but so far so good.

Had a lot of fun doing this and spent a great deal of time on it and as before, If you would like any more pics or like any info on anything you see here, feel free to email me and I will try to send any info I can.

I'm pretty sure I'm not quite done with it yet........

Kubota Cab

Winter time is here again so means some spare time to work on the cab project again.

Worked about 7 hrs on it Thanksgiving day and go both doors cut out and mounted.

Had to make my own door hinges so door would swing far enough out to allow them to be removed.

Painted them Friday and will work on door handles next.

Garden Science Project

Seen that "upside down" tomato plant thing at the store and decided to do my own version. Used 2 five gallon buckets, one blue, one black. Know for a fact that tomato plant like the warmer soil so did a little experiment on my own. Used 4 of the same tomatoes from the same flat to make the results even.

Planted one in the bottom of each bucket and one in the top. Have watered and fertilized them at the same time and the same amount.

As you can see the results are somewhat skewed at the time.

Both of the plants in the bottom of the bucket are stunted on growth side of things. The one in the black bucket top has the most growth, but both the bottom one in each bucket both have a 2" green tomato on them.

Solar Pool Heat

Bought this on Ebay about 2 years ago. It's 2 panels 2' x 20' I mounted back to back on top of the pool fence. Have then titled about 45 degrees to the south. Panels are made of black PVC tubing that has multiple tubes running end to end. The water enters in the top, runs down the length of the panel and back again. Hooks up between the filter outfeed and pool inlet. This one came with a diverter valve that limits the flow thru the panels. Idea flow is 12 - 15 gpm.

Pool temperature, on a bright sunny day, raises about 1 degree an hour. The pool is 20' x 40' so it holds about 20,000 gallons of water. Before I installed this about the same sunny conditions, it would raise only a half degree and hour. Nice thing that I have also tried that if the pool temps get too high, you can run the filter and panels at night and it will act as a radiator and cool the pool off a few degrees.

For the first year I just had them laying out on the deck but decided last year that they were worth keeping. Have hard piped them up for easy removal during winter months.

Endless Gas

It's a Brinkmann Pro Series 4400.

I bought it at the end of the 2006 summer closeout sale. Picked it up for $125. Didn't want to spend too much in case this little experiment didn't work. Looked for a natural gas grill, but after shopping around, the price was a little more than I wanted to spend. Searched the internet for some info on how to convert a propane grill to natural gas and presto ! I found this site. There are several other links on this page that have useful information on doing this.

WARNING: If you are not sure of what you are doing, Do Not attempt this.

The tricky part, after getting the natural gas line to the grill, is to drill out the jets to the proper size. It's pretty much hit and miss of drilling out the burner jets. I just matched up the drill bit with what the propane on was and jumped up 2 numbers at a time until I got the flame I wanted. I think I went to a 52 drill size.

Another word of caution here is don't drill it out to big.

I've had this working for about two years now and can honestly say that I grill out much more now that the days of checking if you have enough propane to grill out are gone. I still like to grill with charcoal during the lazy days of summer, but this is the next best thing if you don't have the extra time.

Kubota Cab Project

Updated 2.22.09




This weekend's events included adding lights, marker lights and wiring them all up. Went with LED marker lights since I found out the Kubota alternator only puts out 14 amp. There goes the Bose sound system I was going to install......



Also go the back panels cut out, painted and installed. Back and front glass put in. Top put on, bolted down and halfway painted. Tried to put the back glass panels in but too many nasty words came out of my mouth during this. Have to practice on this to get the hang of it.

Got the cage painted and the top on (not here) . Hope to get a lot more done this weekend....!!!

Kubota Cab Project

Spend too much time on the internet snooping around and I eventually find something that sparks my interest. This guy did a great job on making a Cab for his BX22 Kubota. I was looking to buy one for mine, but have decided to see if I can try to build one my self. Started sometime around the 17th of Jan, but haven't kept my nose to the grindstone on it. I will try to take some pics as this goes along.

Here's what I have so far.


Tack welded everything together, then changed my mind and re-did to to bolt together. Like maybe someday I might want to remove it?

More on this as it devolves.

Electronic Door Lock

Replaced this:












With this:

New digital lock from Schlage
I picked up at the big box store.
Took about 15 min to install and program.

Zero problems installing it in an existing door.

Rather than give out keys, you can program in a 4 digit code for visitors. When done, the code can be erased.

Very simple to use and program.

Snow Pre-Treatment Test #2 = Not so well

This doesn't seem to be an exact science....but learned a few things Sunday night:

• When the NWS in STL says there will be less than .01 ice accumulation, they could be wrong.

• Either watch Football or watch the weather, not both.
  

• Have the salt solution already made up. The 30 min to add water and mix was pretty much the failure of this test.
  

• Waiting to the last minute sometimes is the coldest.

More fun in store for this Thursday. 1/4"+ of freezing rain in the forecast.

Bad Weather Ahead?

Sleet, Freezing Rain, & Snow?

Looks like test #2 is in store for the Pre-Treatment machine.

Not looking forward to the late Sunday night / early Monday morning freezing here!

Snow Pre-treatment Pt. 1

This was going to be a test on a PRE-snowfall treatments, but thing didn't go as planned. Went into work Monday to find that the temp had dropped below 32 and froze most of the snow that had fell Sunday night.

Oh well. It says it is supposta works as a de-icer as well as a pre-treatment.

The test is on !

Here is what I came up with:

Heard some stories and read some info on the internet of using a brine solution sprayed down before a snowfall to prevent snow and ice from bonding to the pavement. Iowa DOT has had some good results and are currently using this now. Did some research and found out that the best solution is a 23% brine solution. This works to -6 degrees.

Rigged up this from items around the work place and came up with something I think will work. Made a collapsible boom that extends out to 16' span with 14 jets total. ( Work currently has about 5 acres of concrete that needs to be cleaned off ) Each jet dispenses .3 gpm at 40 psi. That means the rate for all 14 jets would be 4.2 gpm. In order not to overheat a 12vdc pump I sized it smaller at 3.9 gpm. Current draw on the pump is around 7 amp and since I just bought a battery for the wheeler for $60+, I decided to used a deep cell battery for the same amount. Picked up the pump thru Grainger, hose, piping, jet, battery @ Farm and Home supply.


















Mixture on the solution seems to be a 1-2-3 ratio. 1 gallon of water to 2.3 pounds of salt. Since I had 55 gal barrels that were readily available at work, I used them. It worked out pretty well. I added 3 - 40 lbs bags of rock salt and fill the remainder up with water.

Mixed the solution up with a barrel mixer we had at work and I was off.



















First trip was on a slight downhill slope and I quickly learned I was pulling quite a bit of weight. 1154 lbs of Brine solution alone. That explains why my 400 lb Rancher w/ my 225 lb ass was slowly being pushed down this incline.
Go figure.

Looking behind me, I could see that the brine solution was working. Travel speed is a bit slow. Objective is to cover the ground with the brine solution and evenly spread it without causing excess waste. This on the Rancher is slightly over idle in second gear. Slow to say the least. Last pic I took here is after I had made one pass and missed a spot. Looks like it worked and I only used 240 lbs of salt to do the entire lot. Normal usage for something like this is around 600 - 800 lbs per use with the traditional salt spreader. Something I am testing around with is a home version with a sprayer on the driveway. 2-3 gallons could easily cover the average drive. I have found a sprayer tank that could be mounted on my 4 wheeler for home use laying around the mess/ garage and may be playing with that after some tests with the hand held sprayer !!!