During the cold winter months, it can sometimes be a challenge to make sure your Kubota tractor will start when you need it to, especially if your tractor is stored out in the elements. A block heater is a useful tool in meeting this challenge.
We are often asked how a block heater works and how long a block heater should be plugged in for. There are a lot of variables involved, so we figured the easiest way to walk through this issue would be to put a little video together. In this video, we show a block heater melting some ice and warming up a bucket which is helpful in showing the rate a block heater works at. We also show the installation of a block heater in a Kubota M4 tractor.
Townline Equipment is the leading Kubota dealer in Plainfield NH and Pittsford VT. We sell and service a large variety of equipment including Kubota tractors, Kubota utility vehicles, Kubota zero turn mowers and Kubota construction equipment.  Contact Us Today: Plainfield NH - 603-675-6347 / Pittsford VT – 802-483-6464 / Email: info@townlineequipment. Videos and articles on our blog are meant to be a general guide only. Always consult your owner’s manual for additional detailed product information and related safety precautions. Visit www./disclaimer for more information.
Winter in New England certainly puts extra strain on our equipment with long stretches of cold weather. During the cold winter months, equipment has to work harder: Engines take longer to warm up, starting can be a challenge, and moisture in fluids can lead to mechanical failures. With all of these potential issues popping up during the winter months, here are some tips to keep your equipment starting smoothly when it’s cold.
Keep Up with Your Preventative Maintenance Schedule
The first step in making sure your Kubota equipment is ready to work when you are is to consistently perform your preventative maintenance on schedule and perform your walk around checks. You can adhere to a long list of best practices for starting your equipment in the winter, but if you’re not changing fluids and filters, greasing, and taking care of routine service items at the recommended intervals, you have a much greater chance of running into starting and performance issues during the winter months.
Keep Your Battery Charged
Since it will take extra time to turn over a motor in the cold winter months, make sure you have a healthy battery. Check to make sure your battery is fully charged in addition to charging while the tractor is running. If this is not something you can do on your own, we are always here for assistance in charging or replacing batteries
Use a Block Heater
The main purpose of an engine block heater is to make it easier to start the engine, but preheating the engine oil, antifreeze, and internal engine components also reduces wear and tear. Plugging your tractor or construction equipment in will allow the block heater to create the heat necessary for combustion to start the equipment. Leave the tractor plugged in for at least 4 to 5 hours before you try to start it. It will take this long to heat coolant in the engine block. At Townline, we sell almost every new tractor and piece of construction equipment with a free engine block heater.
Equipment Storage Options
If you are able to keep your Kubota tractor in a warm, dry place during the winter, it should be a pretty easy process to start and run during cold weather. However, many Kubota tractors do live outside their whole life. For tractors and construction equipment that is stored outside, it is important to use your block heater to assist in starting along with glow plugs if equipped. You can also use tarps, a small shed or an outside overhang to help keep your equipment out of the weather and make the starting process easier.
Use Good Winter Diesel Fuel and Keep Your Fuel Tank Full
The type of diesel fuel you use in your Kubota machine can have a direct effect on how well the engine will start and run. It is important to make sure to have winter blend off road diesel. This fuel lacks certain components that corrupt fuel over time. Putting anti-gelling diesel fuel additives into your fuel can also help regardless of whether or not you’re using off road diesel. These additives can prevent gelling, icing, disperse moisture, and help with cold starts in general.
Idle the Engine Before Working with Your Equipment
After you have started your tractor, let it idle to warm up. This allows the heat from the engine to move into the transmission, transfer case and gear drive of the tractor. It is important to make sure that the oil is warm and viscous enough so it can travel around the tractor’s lines. Usually if your tractor can warm up to a normal operating temperature, you will be able to work all day without any surprises.
Reach out to Townline if You Need Help
Taking these steps will help you make sure your Kubota equipment will be ready to start and work when you need it this winter. However, Mother Nature does specialize in creating new surprises for us each year, so if you find yourself with a tractor issue that you can't figure out or that you need help with, contact our service team. We have a fleet of Mobile Onsite service trucks that can come right to your home or place of business and get you up and running during the winter season.
Townline Equipment is the leading Kubota dealer in Plainfield NH and Pittsford VT. We sell and service a large variety of equipment including Kubota tractors, Kubota utility vehicles, Kubota zero turn mowers and Kubota construction equipment.  Contact Us Today: Plainfield NH - 603-675-6347 / Pittsford VT – 802-483-6464 / Email: info@townlineequipment. Videos and articles on our blog are meant to be a general guide only. Always consult your owner’s manual for additional detailed product information and related safety precautions. Visit www./disclaimer for more information.
New England’s winter season can make owning equipment quite frustrating if preventative measures are not taken to help your equipment get through the cold weather. These winter issues typically start to pop up during the months of December and January when our temperatures consistently drop below 30 degrees. In these conditions, fuel will start to gel if it is not properly conditioned and maintained.
How Does Diesel Fuel Gel?
Diesel fuel has the ability to solidify due to cold temperatures. The colder the surrounding air temperature is, the less viscous the fuel will become making it hard to pass through fuel lines and filters. The temperature at which this occurs varies based on the amount of water in your diesel fuel. Usually the fuel begins to gel in the fuel filter and is typically the first place to check for gelling.
What Are Some of the Symptoms of Diesel Fuel Gelling?
The first symptom you will find is your Kubota tractor will start briefly, but die relatively quickly after starting and will not re-start. The reason for this is the tractor has used up the available fuel to the injectors and no new fuel can pass through the system. Another scenario would be while operating your Kubota tractor it will start to lose power and eventually cut out. This happens when non treated fuel is poured into the tank and finally makes it into the fuel system. It is important to confirm that the fuel you use during cold winters is conditioned before using it in your equipment.
How Do You Treat Diesel Fuel Gelling?
The only real treatment for gelling is warming up the fuel in your Kubota tractor’s system. There are a few ways to do this based on how quickly you need to use your tractor.
The fastest treatment is to drain your fuel filter then fill it with room temperature fuel
You can also warm the fuel that is already in your filter
You can take the filter off and take it inside to thaw out
You can put heat on the tractor itself if you can get to a heated garage or near a space heater
How Can You Prevent Diesel Fuel Gelling in the First Place?
There are many additives that you can use to treat your diesel fuel to prevent gelling. We supply these at both of our store locations and also use them in all of our equipment from August on. Storing equipment inside a heated facility is not an option for everyone, but it will prevent gelling if you have the option. For Kubota equipment stored outside, using conditioned winter fuel is the best option for preventing gelled fuel issues. Block heaters, tank heaters, and filter heaters are also preventative measures that can be taken to help assist your equipment through cold winters. Additionally, we recommend only using a winter blend off road diesel fuel during the winter months and to keep your tank full of treated diesel fuel to try and minimize the amount of moisture created in the diesel tank.
Reach out to Townline if you need help
If you have more questions on winter diesel fuel treatment, give our parts department a call and we can walk you through our diesel fuel treatment options. Additionally, if you find your Kubota equipment gelled up this winter and can’t get it going or don’t have the time to get it going, give our service department a call. We have a fleet of Mobile Onsite service trucks that can come right to your home or place of business and get you up and running during the cold winter months.
Townline Equipment is the leading Kubota dealer in Plainfield NH and Pittsford VT. We sell and service a large variety of equipment including Kubota tractors, Kubota utility vehicles, Kubota zero turn mowers and Kubota construction equipment.  Contact Us Today: Plainfield NH - 603-675-6347 / Pittsford VT – 802-483-6464 / Email: info@townlineequipment. Videos and articles on our blog are meant to be a general guide only. Always consult your owner’s manual for additional detailed product information and related safety precautions. Visit www./disclaimer for more information.
In this video, we walk through a lot of the different snow removal equipment options that we have available for Kubota tractors.
Depending on the model and set up of your Kubota tractor, there are a lot of different implement options and features you can choose from when it comes to finding the best snow removal equipment for your application. Some options that we discuss in this video are front mounted loaders, front mounted snow blowers, rear mounted snow blowers, loader mounted plows, quick attach sub frame snow plows, and ice chains. If you have specific questions about what type of snow removal equipment would work best for your property and application, please don't hesitate to reach out to either of our stores in Plainfield New Hampshire or Pittsford Vermont.
As a Kubota compact and utility tractor dealer in Plainfield NH and Pittsford VT, Townline Equipment sells and services a large variety of equipment including tractors, construction equipment, farming equipment, landscaping equipment, zero turn lawn mowers, snowblowers and a vast assortment of tractor implements and construction attachments.  Contact Us Today: Plainfield NH - 603-675-6347 / Pittsford VT – 802-483-6464 / Email: info@townlineequipment. Videos and articles on our blog are meant to be a general guide only. Always consult your owner’s manual for additional detailed product information and related safety precautions.
Here is a video of the Kubota Tractor Corporation SSV75 skid steer working an HLA snow wing. This snow wing is a combination between a six foot box pusher and an 11 foot angle blade.
This snow wing is equipped with HLA's Edgeflex technology so instead of a solid cutting edge on the pusher, it is broken into small sections that can float up and down and follow angles individually making it very adaptive to different plowing conditions and surfaces. We have six foot and eight foot pushers as well as six foot, seven foot and eight foot snow plows in stock. For more information and pricing on snow implements, give either of our stores a call or email us at info@townlineequipment.com. A big thank you to Cummings & Bricker for letting us demo their snow wings!
Townline Equipment is the leading Kubota dealer in Plainfield NH and Pittsford VT. We sell and service a large variety of equipment including Kubota's skid steers and the full line of HLA snow implements.  Contact Us Today: Plainfield NH - 603-675-6347 / Pittsford VT – 802-483-6464 / Email: info@townlineequipment. Videos and articles on our blog are meant to be a general guide only. Always consult your owner’s manual for additional detailed product information and related safety precautions. Visit www./disclaimer for more information.
In this video, we have a Kubota Tractor Corporation R530 wheel loader with an HLA SP2500 eight foot snow pusher. This machine has around 48 horse power and weighs in at just under 10,000 pounds. Keep reading to see this machine in action.
The Kubota R530 wheel loader provides a good balance of being compact in size so it fits into tight spaces in our parking lots while still being efficient enough to movie large volumes of snow during bigger storms. In this video, you can watch this set up in action and get a walk through on how the machine is set up and how to run the loader controls for the pusher. Give us a call for more information on the Kubota R530 compact wheel loader, our line up of HLA snow pushers or any of our other snow equipment solutions.
Townline Equipment is the leading Kubota dealer in Plainfield NH and Pittsford VT. We sell and service a large variety of equipment including Kubota wheel loaders and the full line of HLA snow implements.  Contact Us Today: Plainfield NH - 603-675-6347 / Pittsford VT – 802-483-6464 / Email: info@townlineequipment. Videos and articles on our blog are meant to be a general guide only. Always consult your owner’s manual for additional detailed product information and related safety precautions. Visit www./disclaimer for more information.
