Hey everyone, I was hoping to get some opinions on my recent purchase. I've been looking for a good 30-40hp used tractor for about a month now and have been scouring craigslist and going to auctions because I can't afford to buy new at that size.
As a disclaimer, when I say scouring craigslist, I'm talking meta-searching all locations in a 250 mile radius on a continuous 10 minute loop for over 3 weeks with an alert anytime something new pops up. My thinking being that anything that was a good enough deal for me to afford wouldn't last more than an hour or two.
So an ad came up for a DK40 that seemed too good to be true. It's a 2002 with 600 hours, FEL, 8x8 gear trans, canopy, ag tires, 4x4, basically everything I was looked for, for $5,500. So I call the guy and apparently he just bought 100+ acres of land and there were a couple of tractors in one of the barns that he's clearing out. So I ask him what's wrong with the Kioti and he says it's smoking and leaking some oil from the blow by tube but everything works fine. I'm skeptical but ask him about the other tractor and he tells me it's a JD 1250 with nothing wrong with it and a new clutch and tires and his asking price is at least $4-5k under market value for that one. So maybe he really is just clearing stuff out and doesn't need to get everything he could out of these money-wise.
So I go out to look at it. It's not in great shape (canopy's cracked, one of the front headlights is broken) but hey, it's a tractor. Sheet metal looks good, no obvious signs of an accident or anything bent, cracked, or out of alignment that I can see. Overall, I'd say it looks slightly rougher than your average 10 year old tractor (but then again, most of the used tractor's I've been looking at were at dealers where they've been prettied up some). Everything runs fine, it starts up immediately. I have no experience with the new generation of tractors but I couldn't notice any loss of power. It was clearly smoking pretty good though and I could see a bunch of old oil crud around the blow by drain tube thing. All the hydraulics seemed to work well, FEL and hitch. He said he ran it for a few hours over the last month since he bought the place and it hadn't used enough oil for him to be able to tell on the dip. When I pulled the dip the oil looked brand new though.
He told me a friend of his that's a mechanic told him a ring job would get it right. An old farmer who was there to look at it after me was talking to his buddy and I heard him say the same thing about the rings. Couple things about that bother me though. For one, I've heard that if you're going to open it up to do the rings, 9 times out of 10 you're best off just doing a full rebuild or at least things tend to spiral in that direction. And second, what could have gone wrong in 600 hours where it would need to be rebuilt and is this just a lemon that I should have stayed clear of?
Anyway, really long story longer, there were multiple people coming to look at it after me (and one already arrived) so I knew I had one shot at it, and the guy offered to deliver it for free so I pulled the trigger.
So I just wanted to see what you folks thought about all this. One guy I know recommeded that if it's running good I should just use it til I see a noticeable drop in performance and then get it fully rebuilt. Will that not just do more damage in the long run though? I'm ok with working on cars but this is my first tractor so I'm not as familiar with repairs and frankly not really qualified to have made an informed purchase. But at the same time this thing's worth what, like $14k+ without any issues? So I figured I had a lot of wiggle room and even with a full rebuild would come out way ahead.
Any thoughts on how I should approach this? Should I just use it til something goes wronger? Get it rebuilt? Sell if for scrap metal cause I just got played?
Thanks!
As a disclaimer, when I say scouring craigslist, I'm talking meta-searching all locations in a 250 mile radius on a continuous 10 minute loop for over 3 weeks with an alert anytime something new pops up. My thinking being that anything that was a good enough deal for me to afford wouldn't last more than an hour or two.
So an ad came up for a DK40 that seemed too good to be true. It's a 2002 with 600 hours, FEL, 8x8 gear trans, canopy, ag tires, 4x4, basically everything I was looked for, for $5,500. So I call the guy and apparently he just bought 100+ acres of land and there were a couple of tractors in one of the barns that he's clearing out. So I ask him what's wrong with the Kioti and he says it's smoking and leaking some oil from the blow by tube but everything works fine. I'm skeptical but ask him about the other tractor and he tells me it's a JD 1250 with nothing wrong with it and a new clutch and tires and his asking price is at least $4-5k under market value for that one. So maybe he really is just clearing stuff out and doesn't need to get everything he could out of these money-wise.
So I go out to look at it. It's not in great shape (canopy's cracked, one of the front headlights is broken) but hey, it's a tractor. Sheet metal looks good, no obvious signs of an accident or anything bent, cracked, or out of alignment that I can see. Overall, I'd say it looks slightly rougher than your average 10 year old tractor (but then again, most of the used tractor's I've been looking at were at dealers where they've been prettied up some). Everything runs fine, it starts up immediately. I have no experience with the new generation of tractors but I couldn't notice any loss of power. It was clearly smoking pretty good though and I could see a bunch of old oil crud around the blow by drain tube thing. All the hydraulics seemed to work well, FEL and hitch. He said he ran it for a few hours over the last month since he bought the place and it hadn't used enough oil for him to be able to tell on the dip. When I pulled the dip the oil looked brand new though.
He told me a friend of his that's a mechanic told him a ring job would get it right. An old farmer who was there to look at it after me was talking to his buddy and I heard him say the same thing about the rings. Couple things about that bother me though. For one, I've heard that if you're going to open it up to do the rings, 9 times out of 10 you're best off just doing a full rebuild or at least things tend to spiral in that direction. And second, what could have gone wrong in 600 hours where it would need to be rebuilt and is this just a lemon that I should have stayed clear of?
Anyway, really long story longer, there were multiple people coming to look at it after me (and one already arrived) so I knew I had one shot at it, and the guy offered to deliver it for free so I pulled the trigger.
So I just wanted to see what you folks thought about all this. One guy I know recommeded that if it's running good I should just use it til I see a noticeable drop in performance and then get it fully rebuilt. Will that not just do more damage in the long run though? I'm ok with working on cars but this is my first tractor so I'm not as familiar with repairs and frankly not really qualified to have made an informed purchase. But at the same time this thing's worth what, like $14k+ without any issues? So I figured I had a lot of wiggle room and even with a full rebuild would come out way ahead.
Any thoughts on how I should approach this? Should I just use it til something goes wronger? Get it rebuilt? Sell if for scrap metal cause I just got played?
Thanks!
