Hard,
We're all very sorry for the bad experience you had w/ your 5000 series. However, your experiences are not consistent w/ mine. A couple points:
1. You mention fairly authoritatively that Yanmar is going to begin manufacturing CC CUTs and Sub-Cuts. That would certainly be big news, but I haven't seen this anywhere. In the last thread I saw on this subject I thought the consensus was the JD would probably frown on this, and furthermore probably only related to the 7500 series and not the 5000/6000 series tractors. Can you provide any more information on this, or is this just your personal belief?
2. There is no doubt you had a bad experience with the 5000 series tractors. From all the reviews I've read on these tractors (both on this site and others), while there are (were?) some issues with some tractors, most people by and large love their 5000 series. It appears to me most of the problem tractors were isolated to the 2004 model year. I take issue when you lump all 5000 series tractors from all model years together and call them bad tractors. This creates a false perception - when anyone does have an issue, its no longer a normal maintance or warranty issue that can be fixed, but rather just another indication of a bad tractor and how stupid anyone must be for buying it. This just isn't fair.
3. I struggle to understand your hostility towards cub cadet. From my recollection you put about 200 hours on two different tractors, and then at the end of the day got 100% of your money back so you could go buy a different color tractor. I would say cub cadet really stood behind their product and took care of you. To me that's the real take away.
4. Are we to assume everytime someone brings up a sub-CUT cub cadet you are going to chime in and let us know about your bad experience? Do me a favor, when you do this will you also let them know they totally stood behind their product and completely reimbursed your money after 200 hours?
Kindest Regards,
Mike