Building a winter cab for my kubota

In the summer my kubota b8200 will be a lawn mowing machine, and in the winter it will be a snow blowing machine. One of those two I'll need some protection from the elements.

Rolled into home depot to look at a new toilet, an hour later I rolled out with $173 in steel and a die hard determination to build a steel cab on the new tractor. What can I say, I'm easily distracted. You don't want to hear what my wife had to say about it when I showed up back home without a toilet, but rather with a bunch of steel.

Since I hadn't measured anything at all, I went off memory. I bought materials to build a 4'x4'x6' box, and figured I'd scale down if necessary.

After endless frustration with my stupid harbor freight stick welder, I decided to just pick up some ï½¼" bolts and bits, so back to the depot. I own a crappy harbor freight stick welder because I only have a single 15a 110v service in my garage. Getting 220v over there would require trenching around my house and digging up my driveway, or busting up the concrete foundation of the house. There's a design flaw in there somewhere.

Did you know that home depot sells quality lincoln wire feed welders? So in addition to $10 in bolts I walked out with a new $450 welder. Also thank you Home Depot for your military and veterans discounts, $45 off was very nice.

Back in the day the stick welders scoffed at the wire guys, took more skill, and could weld much heavier stuff. Having never done flux core wire welding before, I followed the basic assembly instructions, filed the instructional video in one of the tool drawers to be reviewed shortly after **** freezes over, and got to it.

I must say, my first welds were horrible. Also I was doing multiple 90 degree joints coming to a corner, so that was rough. Within the hour, though, I had the voltage and wire speed dialed in, and was getting pretty good welds. For a 110v machine, it did extremely well. I even ran a little hot in some cases and burned holes that I needed to go back and patch up.

Anyway, I'm out of materials and nothing is open until tomorrow, so no more fun until then. I need 2 more u bars for the front supports, a couple more 6' sections of ï½½" angle iron, flat steel, and a great deal of plexiglass. That should cover construction, plus hinges for the doors, latches, and then start thinking about electrical. 4 way flashers, front and rear mount flood lights, stereo, cup holder, and possibly a heater are on the list.

Once it's complete, I'll take it off the tractor, paint it, sand down and paint the tractor itself, and it should be looking like new. Will post updated pictures as I go, but for now here's how far I got. So far it's been slow because I've still been trying to figure out what I want to do. Now that I have it figured out, just need to get the materials and hopefully it'll move more quickly.

Started with the top, up side down. The worst welds are here, but once it's painted this will be pretty much impossible to tell.



Enter the new welder. Man this thing flies, and makes the work amazingly easy.



These are my favorite pieces. I made two, need two more. I think they'll really came out well. They support the front while going around the break and clutch pedals.



Front is to high, Have to chop the supports and bring it down about two inches and re-weld.



Back away until tomorrow.



Still no new toilet for the downstairs powder room.

Old man,s advise.. do not weld it directly to the little tractor. Go get some rubber engine mounts. You need 4 of them bolt 2 to the tractor there at the front and two at the back then work from that. Will make removing it easier in the summer and cut the noise some.
In all my years with Kubota I have see it all in cabs but give you a for effort.

Yeah, it's being bolted to the tractor. There are 4 bolts on the rear with a piece of angle iron, then the front supports will bolt to the floor boards.

Couple things. Make sure you put piece of rubber belting down where you bolt it. At very least cut some leather straps from an old boot and use them. Second- can you fabricate some sort of toilet from the left over
steel to keep her happy?

Reminds me of a home made job that I saw and looked very similar to yours, years ago. A fella that I knew took me over to see an elderly fella in his eighties that wanted to sell at least his Case VAC, and possibly his AC D-15. He rolled out the D-15 to show me both his home made power steering, because he had a bad heart as well. But he also made a cab similar to yours in size, shape, and mount. He enclosed the steel frame with plexiglass everything. Front, back, roof, sides, and doors. Then he used tarp or canvass to enshroud from the hood...down, and front to cab. He said that the heat pushed back from the radiator cooling fan from the engine roasted him out and that he had to prop the doors or windows open to avoid being baked. His D-15 was gas, so it probably ran hotter. That old fella still tilled, but his wife passed and he lost his partner and will to go on. If memory serves me correctly, he was selling it all including a 7' pull along hog that he modified to be pull along. Old time farmer that fabricated what he needed, including power steering using a push pull valve/gate and cylinder. I hope it all worked out in his favor. Nice fella.

Anyway, it can be done. I saw one and it looked a whole lot like yours, and both tractors were...orange. Good luck.

Mark

Mark - That sounds like the exact blueprint that I had in my head at this point. Was even working on my own power steering. I even have old faded plexiglass for the roof from the church.

I bought a 110 volt Lincoln mig that uses shielded wire from them years ago,, handy for small jobs and I run it with my generator with ease for field repairs,, I also have a big 225 Lincoln mig in the shop and a stick welder,,, looks like you are on your way to a much nicer way to move snow,, like others said you are creating a "Sound Box" that will transfer sounds like you never knew your tractor made,, very wise move to isolate all mounting points to stop noise transfer,,, looks good so far otherwise form what I can see thanks for sharing
cnt

Have you thought of where you will store it when not on the tractor? I have a soft cab for my Cub Cadet that bolts together. For your set-up, I would make the front frame one piece, back frame one piece, and the front to rear pieces separate. When it comes off, it will lay down or stand against a wall pretty thin, out of the way. Also, might put a little arch in the top so water will run off any direction. What you have so far looks good. Let us know how the progress goes.

I build a cab around the roll cage of my Terramite. I used it one winter than
threw it away because it was like being inside a steel drum and someone was
pounding on it with a hammer. I had to wear ear protection the sound was so
loud.

Even a topper traps sound, but nothing like a cab.

Good luck

It looks like your doing a good job.

I started out with a homemade weather break a few Kubota's ago. Then put a Curtis cab on one which was ok, just took the doors off in the summer. Now I have one with a factory cab which was the best thing I did in a while. Although I have a little more money invested in it as opposed to the tractor with the homemade cab. It sure make for a nice tractor to blow snow with though. Although anything is better than nothing especially when the wind is blowing

I'm up to $250 invested. I picked up steel for sides and doors, as well as windshield plexiglass. I put the top on just to see what kidn of headroom it had. Was mid weld when I ran out of wire. I have to drop the front an inch or so to level it out.

The build is taking longer than my last one. Working with metal is a bit tougher than wood.

I'll pick up another spool or two tomorrow, hopefully home depot restockes their metal supplies. I've picked a few specific shelves fairly bare at this point.

I tried turning voltage down as far as I could to do sheet metal, but burned right though it, so I just put heavier stuff behind it and stuck it. I was at a weird angle so I couldn't get decent beads, but they were holding.