Anyone who owns a BX24 (or the "50-series" like BX1850/2350) knows of the issue these tractors had new from the factory regarding the abrupt stop when letting up on the reverse pedal. Mine is no exception. Recently I decided to do more investigating to see if anyone has come up with a solution, as Kubota never did issue a recall. I ran across a guy's posting on the internet that showed that he extended the lever arm that the damping gas strut acts on, which he said did solve the problem. I decided to give it a try. This first photo shows the original arrangement, with the gas strut attaching point being on the rod that runs back to the transmission from the foot pedal.
As seen above, the gold-colored rod going to the right is to control the transmission speed and direction. Pushing the rod to the rear (push to the right in the photo) makes the tractor go forward. The further rearward the rod goes, the faster the tractor goes. Pulling the rod to the front of the tractor (pull left in the photo) makes the tractor go in reverse. The rod is centered in the neutral position in the photo and has a spring to keep it centered when there is no external push/pull on the rod. You can see the gas strut connected to the end of this gold rod. The gas strut dampens the movement of the rod when you let off on the forward/reverse pedals. There is maybe an inch of movement on the gas strut in the forward direction and maybe 1/2 an inch in the reverse direction.
Adding length to the lever for the gas strut also strengthens the strut's damping effect and also it adds more stroke length to the strut. This next photo shows the parts I made to lengthen the lever for the strut. The brass part is what the gas strut's rod eye will ride on.
While this fix did help to cure the abrupt stop in reverse when releasing the reverse pedal (it will never go away due to the inherent design), it also made the pedal react slower when letting off in the forward direction such that it takes too long to stop after releasing the forward pedal. After finding this out, I found an adjustment procedure for the "neutral" spring that keeps the pedal in the centered position between forward and reverse when the pedals aren't being pushed. It mentions that the spring may weaken over time and to perform the adjustment every 100 hours. It says to put the tractor in high range and the engine at maximum RPM, then press the Forward pedal. Release the pedal quickly and determine how far the tractor goes before stopping. It should be 3 meters (9.8 feet). I adjusted my spring one turn of the nuts and it helped my situation. I think this modification was beneficial to some degree.
There are many forum threads online about people complaining to Kubota 15 years ago about this issue when these tractors were new, and Kubota's failure to admit there was a problem. Several people did mention that their local dealer did try to fix the issue, but to no avail. And others said their dealer helped them out by giving them higher trade-in value on their old tractor for a new model that didn't have the issue, as apparently Kubota made a design change to the transmission in the next model (BX25/1860/2360).
After doing the reverse modification, I greased the tractor and found a broken zerk fitting on the loader center cylinder bucket pivot. There were remnants of the zerk in the pivot pin so I pulled the pin off the tractor and used an Easy Out to get out the broken piece. A lot of times these things don't work out when using an Easy Out but this time it did. Thankfully, an easy job.
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