Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Tractor for maintaining small places

I hear you and know the feeling.

This one is three feet deep by five foot wide. I started out 6 inches deeper and cut it down, thinking I did not want him getting it too heavy plus I wanted him to be able to reach all the wood easily from the rear. I am glad I cut the extra 6" off because when we had it level full of wood as in the picture when he went to raise it at engine idle the tractor would not do it (has 2544 hours on it so hydraulic pump could be a little weak). But he revved it just slightly and it lifted it easily.

So that told me I had the size about right for his size tractor. I think I could have made it 3.5' deep for my 38 hp tractor and it would have handled it easily.

My FIL does not get in any hurry, but for his age and only having one arm, he gets quite a bit done. The single handle in the middle of the gate is so it can be taken out with one hand. If I had made it for me I would have put two handles.

John, after watching all you do, I have decided you are as handy as a shirt pocket! Nice job on the 3 pt cart.

Very nice......!!!

Really enjoyed reviewing this thread, lots of good info despite the squabbling over the nanny err safety features on the newer tractors. Reminds me a bit of how aviation has changed over the years....making it the safest form of transportation per mile there is.

I thought I would be buying a small tractor this year and am fortunate enough to have three of the most popular dealers nearby. Red, orange and green. I drove all three in the sub compact and compact sizes. They were all 25 HP though I rented a 38 HP Mahindra for a day.

The bigger Mahindra was more tractor than I needed for pond and yard work. It had only a FEL and a box blade. I leveled banks and spread some gravel for creek crossings and really appreciated the power. It was geared as I thought that was what I wanted. It was a little awkward between bank and fence but did well. The 25 HP version with backhoe was a bit cheaper than Kubota or Deere but a little rougher and louder and had a worse reputation for maintenance, deserved or not, than the other two.

I didn't get to work the Kubota but really liked it driving around the lot. The sub compact was quiet and quite capable feeling with a FEL and backhoe. The next size up a good friend bought this year and he seems quite pleased with it with FEL and BH. The local dealer doesn't have the best reputation, again, deserved or not. Both sub and compact were priced right between red and green, Mahindra and Deere.

The Deere dealer has a great reputation and they just gave me a sub compact to work for the day and work it I did. I borrowed a friend's car hauler (4 wheel) trailer and picked it up with my 4x4 3.0 L Ford Ranger. It pulled it with ease; a real advantage. I dug 2 boat launch ramps, hauled rock to reinforce culverts and creek crossings, cleared brush and took it some places I likely shouldn't have. Handy, capable little tractor; I liked it a lot.... but. It did develop a power steering leak that cut my day a couple hrs short and I don't like the fact that the FEL doesn't have the standard skid steer release; it's proprietary. It is also a bit more expensive than the rest. Green is the color of money.

In the end I decided to wait until next year both because I'm cheap and I still can't get my wife to move permanently to the pond err farm.

My experience with tractors started with a Super H Farmall at about age 6 before I could reach the pedals and proceeded through newer and newer tractors from Deere, Oliver, Ford and several more IH's. I took a long break continuing to operate heavy equipment from a 25,000 lb F-106 to a 300,000 lb or so 767...... a lot has changed, most for the better.

I will not be without 4 wheel drive and am warming up to hydrostatic drive. Operate in 2 wheel, get stuck, back out in 4 wheel. Loader work with the hydrostatic is superb though I still don't mind the clutch. The BH on the sub is very handy and balances out the FEL very well if both are attached but I really didn't like the single seat. The hoe on the sub is so small that the tractor needs to be moved often and getting off to change the seat position every time is a pain for someone that has been around the sun as many times as I have. I understand the new Deere sub has 2 seats with the back hoe, a real plus.

The new safety stuff didn't bother me at all. I remember going hell bent for leather on a Utility 350 at about age 15 down a dirt road and bouncing out of the seat. Flopping around off the side hanging on to the wheel was not good. Though I managed to climb back on at speed with nothing damaged but my ego, it could easily have been the end; I could have used the nanny to shut the engine down. A lot of my land is steep so the rollover protection and seat belt are certainly welcome as well.

I'm leaning toward Green but being so cheap I squeak when I walk, Orange and Red are not out of the question. I'm currently beating on a Sears 18 HP mower that gets a lot done but won't last using it the way I do. The subs are handy around the house and pond but I have a fairly large area of pasture I lease that I might like to work on such that the larger tractors are still a possibility.

These things are so expensive that renting is certainly tempting.

Good luck in your ultimate decision. The good news is that as far as I am aware, all the major manufacturers make a pretty good tractor. You are not likely to go too wrong with any of them.

For utility, shuttle, dinking around work the hydrostat transmission can not be beat. If a person is going to hook up to a plow, disc or heavy tillage and work it in that application regularly for long hours it is not the best choice. Too much loss in the transmission mechanism. Several better choices available for that application (gear, power shift and CVT which incorporates some hydrostat features but usually either gear or hydrostat are the two only available choices in the compact size tractors). But for the average home owner that mostly does utility jobs involving going back and forth a lot, and if especially the wife or kids will be driving it occasionally, the convenience of the hydrostat transmission beats gears and a clutch hands down.

Glad you enjoyed the thread. If I have something I think will be useful to others concerning small tractors I try to add it to this thread just for that reason. I also thought there was a lot of good information and opinions that are worth keeping the thread alive occasionally for new members that come along.

I really like my orange 34 hp tractor. I wish I would have gotten a larger size. It does everything I want to do but dealer says I work that little tractor hard. So undersized is not good. And I would really like to have a 75 hp track hoe but the cost is more than I want to spend, so rental is working for me for now. Rental might be your best bet.

Tracy I have a Kubota MX 5100 and guess what..... it ain't big enough for what I want it to do.....

Hey guys would like your opinions. I've got my little 2003 JD 585x (1285 hours) over at my JD dealer for service. They report one of the cylinders on my JD 45 FEL is leaking. My question is should I have them go ahead and rebuild all the cylinders on the FEL, even the ones not currently leaking, effectively zero timing the FEL, while they have it?

Thanks,

Bill D.

Bill, I suppose it never hurts to be proactive about this stuff, but if it were me I might just repair the one that’s leaking. Sure as I tell you that however, you’ll get the thing back home and spring a leak somewhere else, so maybe price out the complete job vs a single cylinder and go from there?

Thanks Tony! I will go with that advice.

As always..much appreciated!

It wasn’t very informative advice, but you’re welcome to it. Maybe I’ll get a discount on my “user” fee, since the quality of my answer was lacking.

I agree with sprkplug.

For us in our shop, when it comes to hydraulic cylinders, we tend to go on the philosophy of letting sleeping dogs lay.

Thing about hydraulic cylinders, some are very simple to rebuild. We do most of them ourselves in our own shop. Then there are those that are buggers. Some involve freezing things and some involve heating them to get the parts over other parts without distorting or breaking them. Those unfortunately we take to a specialty hydraulic shop. I say unfortunately because if it is a reasonably small cylinder (as opposed to something huge that would come off a dozer or excavator) it is sometimes just as cheap for us to buy a brand new cylinder over paying the labor and parts charge to rebuild one.

So as long as they are working, not leaking down or leaking externally, we tend to leave them alone.

The other danger of rebuilding them is if it happens to be a tricky one and the mechanic screws it up, you may end up bringing the tractor back to the shop to fix what they screwed up that was working perfectly well before they went into it. Trust me, it happens.

Thanks for the experience Snrub,

I think I will let sleeping dogs lie and only rebuild the cylinder leaking on my new shed's wood floor!

Bill, I agree with Tony. Fix the problem. The others may never have a problem.

Thanks Dave. I got the same advice now from three of you old gray beards so I guess that's the way to go!

Just in case you're not familiar with the term...."gray beard" is a name assigned to engineers in my business that have been around forever and know their stuff!

Some of my beard and hair is starting to look more white than gray.