OK, 30 hour review of my new to me
M59.
I bought it with 265ish hours on it, paid $42K + gas from Michigan, it was about $45K all told. The owner drove it out here, really nice guy.
I own a
B21 that I've put 300 hours on; used to own a
B7100 that I put maybe a 100 hours on before I sold it (stupid, stupid, never sell a tractor). That's all the tractor experience I have, under 500 hours.
The first thing I'll say about the
M59 is that it is not that big. I was really worried it would be too big for my 15 acres and after getting a bunch of dirt delivered and moving it around, I could easily use a bigger tractor. With the
M59's big bucket you have to be careful to get an even load, you get the bucket unevenly loaded and lift it, the tractor will start to tip over. That isn't the case w/ the
B21 and probably is due to the larger bucket relative to tractor size. That said, I agree with everyone else, that big bucket is nice. Moves a lot of dirt.
I bought a scraper blade so I've pulled the backhoe off. Twice so far, once just to see how hard it is (super easy, easier and faster than the
B21). Putting the 3 point stuff on is a pain though, it takes about 20 minutes to do the swap. The backhoe is easy, the 3 point stuff is not designed for speed, you need tools. Shrug. Could be easier but it's not bad.
I haven't bought hydraulic rams for the 3 point top&tilt yet and I can tell you that not having them sucks big time. So no review on the OEM 3 pt controls, have to come back on that.
The 3 pt position control sort of sucks. The
B21's is easier to use. While I'm not an experienced operator, I have used the box scraper on the
B21 to build some "roads" on the property. You very quickly learn that when the tractor nose goes down the box has to go down; nose up, box up. So on uneven ground your hand lives on the control and you are constantly making adjustments. If the control works right this is pretty easy. On the
B21 there is a handle (like a suitcase handle only fixed in position) right next to the position control. And the position control lever is pretty long so you can move it with just a thumb and a finger. So what I did on the
B21 was put my bottom 3 fingers on the fixed handle and my thumb and forefinger on the control. It was easy to make fairly small adjustments.
On the
M59, the control is much stiffer (maybe it needs lube? Anyone know?) and there isn't a good place to rest your hand. So small adjustments are a lot harder, it's unpleasant to use. My plan is to figure out where I usually have the lever and make a drop on extender that reaches close to something I can rest my hand on. Anyone had the same issue and tried the same idea (or have a better one?).
If I remember correctly, the 4WD lever is up for engaged on one tractor and down for the other. Annoying because my 51 year old eyes are shot and the symbols they use suck. Fix: a sharpy and an arrow pointing at 4WD. Both tractors go in and out of 4WD with the same effort/technique we all know.
Speed control. The good: the on the column high/low is awesome. Auto throttle is nice (though it took me a while to learn to use the actual throttle when I need flow for the loader). The bad: the L/M/H shifter is a pain to move, the
B21 is much much easier/smoother. Dunno, it's annoying but I've gotten used to it.
Front loader. Man, do I love the loader. Love the size, the power, the skid steer compat. I have a grapple and pallet forks. Once we greased all the parts on and off is super fast and pleasant. Really nice.
Backhoe. Had to bury a neighbor's dead lama. Rock hard dried out soil was no problem (once I learned the trick of raking it loose). Backhoe has tons of power.
Seat. Gotta mention the seat. It's nice, better than the
B21 by far. It is tilted forward a bit, I haven't found a way to correct that, is there one?
I think that's it, the summary is: nice tractor, like the size, thought it might be too big but it's not. I could go one size bigger and still be fine. Has some things better than the
B21, some things worse, working through those. I'm keeping both tractors (not gonna make the mistake of selling the smaller one again, still kicking myself over that).
