Kubota MR6000 mower questions ?????

[Crazy Horse]

Our club has acquired an older Kubota MR6000 3-blade mower deck. It was originally a belly-mount mower for a Kubota tractor of some kind or size, but some previous owner has converted it to a 3-point class I rear mower for use on a small tractor with a 3-point hitch. The blade gearbox on the Kubota mower has an 18-spline shaft of about 1" diameter. Unfortunately, the local Kubota dealer either knows nothing about this model or he's not too interested in finding out anything for us. We are hooking it up to a Japanese Satoh 650G tractor which has a PTO which rotates clockwise when viewing from the rear. When viewing the blades from the bottom and with the tractor PTO turning clockwise (as described above), the mower blades rotate counter-clockwise. We are wondering about the following questions .....

1) Approximately how old is this mower ?
2) Is the PTO rotation of our tractor (clockwise from the rear) correct for this mower ?
3) Is the counter-clockwise blade rotation (seen from the bottom) correct ?
4) Are the blade securing bolts a left-hand thread (CW to loosen, CCW to tighten)?

Hopefully, somebody will be able to help us out with this.

Crazy Horse

 

[BlazNT]

What I can tell you is it was setup for PTO from rear in a clockwise rotation.
Blade bolts lefty loosey righty tighty.

 

[Crazy Horse]

Thanks Chuck ...... someone (not an expert for sure) told me once that mower blade tightening was always in the same direction of blade rotation (in this case CCW blade rotation with CCW nut tightening, or a left-hand thread), the reason being that the blade rotation would always be tending to "tighten" the bolt (not really tightening it but tending to tighten it rather than loosen it). Have you ever heard of this explanation or does it make any sense to you?

 

[BlazNT]

I have heard that but it is not true. Remember you check blade rotation from above deck sitting in seat and bolt rotation from under deck looking up at bolt. Your deck has right hand discharge so your blades should spin clockwise.

 

[BlazNT]

2 things:
1. Mower deck you are talking about is going the wrong way on the tractor. The front of the mower deck has the >. It is a right hand discharge.
2. Came off a Kubota B6100

 

[Crazy Horse]

Holy smokes, you're right, none of us noticed that (but not too many club members have even seen this thing). Obviously the guy who changed it over to a 3-point hitch mower must have known that, but with the mower gearbox shaft pointing the direction it is, he didn't have much choice I guess (unless he did some fancy fabricating to have the tractor PTO drive the shaft somehow on the mower) ..... that would have been tough. Here's a couple of questions for you ...

1) Do you think this thing is useable at slow speed as it is without any issues ?
2) Any guess as to the years these mower decks were manufactured ?