LS or Kubota

[Cahaba Valley Farm]

This has been a damn good thread and my hats off to all of the great contributions that have been made to it to give such a satisfying read. It was a pleasant surprise after returning from a two week hiatus from the site. Now to throw my own hat in the ring on this discussion. To the OP and everyone else here:

I have read many threads on this site discussing this same type topic. Should I purchase this brand versus that brand, this model versus that model etc. I know I have personally evaluated every brand that I have in my state and made all those same mental comparisons asking the same questions. I have been pursuing the truth/conclusion to this question since I entered the market for a tractor and here is my most recent truth I have personally reached about it:

When you are shopping for a tractor you have to look at the whole picture. You can't just look at the tractor or just look at the loader or just look at the dealer or just look at the price. It's the whole package/picture that you have to consider when you are making your decision. Ideally you want your purchase to check off as many boxes as possible in the total picture of all things to consider. To understand all the the things to consider I would divide that picture into two categories: Hard value versus Soft value. The hard value is going to be everything that pertains to the tractor itself such as: Specs, features, power, size, build quality, reliability etc. The soft value is going to be everything that pertains to the support of the tractor such as: Warranty, insurance, service, after sales support, parts availability, dealer relations, manufacturer relations, proximity of dealer etc. The challenge is to try to get all that together as much as possible.

What you will find if you take a step back from this thread and consider all the members opinions that have been given is in different markets different brands become the best choice based on that total picture I outlined above. For most of the members here Kubota usually wins out but for other members the other brands won out and that was all due to the unique circumstances of their local markets. That's why these type of threads never have one right universal answer. What is right for you all depends on where you live, what your choices are and what you can afford.

 

[rScotty]

I always thought it was based on cylinder hydraulic pressure. However, you raise some good questions I bet M Harry would know this. Harry if you're reading this thread please weigh in on this for us.

OK. Lets look into it a bit. To make a loader lift more, increasing cylinder hydraulic pressure is probably the one thing that different loader ratings is NOT based on.

Think on this: The force to raise a load is a product of the cylinder piston area times the cylinder pressure.

So in order to get more force, one of the two needs to be made larger - either pressure or area. Mathematics doesn't favor one over the other - they are equally important. So the designer needs to decide which one he will increase.

After a little research he will see that raising the pressure isn't a good way to get more force. It's expensive (maybe very expensive), has increased possibility of failure, and it robs more HP - so it is inefficient. He (or she) will never get that choice past a design review.

An attractive option is to simply increase the size of the cylinder diameter. That will increase the piston area and hence the force. And it has the advantage of also being stronger because cylinders get strong fast as diameter increases. It is a very low dollar solution, no change in reliabiity, plus it uses fluid that is otherwise being wasted in the return line; so efficiency & HP are preserved. Bottom line is that increasing the cylinder diameter is known territory. He can put a price tag on that option, knowing it will be reasonable, and present the price at the design review.

Or he could maybe solve the problem by being more clever than the last designer with some subtle changes to the geometry. The designers all love this choice; it's why they became designers. This is how some loaders ended up with little curved bell-cranks pivoting on the loader arm and located between bucket and cylinder.
Problem here is that in many cases and without some undependable inspired design then often the design can't really be changed much without doing a trade off. For example, unless he is willing to trade lifting force for lifting height. The trade off is attractive and zero dollars added.... although if he does that, the marketing guy at the design review board is going to have a cat.

It's always fun to see which way a designer will go.

rScotty

 

[rScotty]

Oh yeah you had talked about this before. "double thick blow-molded canopy with insulation" Dang, how the heck do you know this Scotty?

A lot of it is just because tractors have been a hobby of ours for awhile. More knowledge just sort of happens.

The canopy info is one of those "just happened" things. I was at a dealer - not buying, just looking - and saw a tractor that was outfitted with a different type of canopy from all the others on the lot. I got curious to know why, so I looked closer, made some drawings, took some pictures, figured out how it was made, and then thought about it for awhile.

Short answer is: Curiosity
rScotty

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Ok you are the first member on here that I am aware of that has actually purchased a Korean tractor brand outside of a reasonable driving distance and that gives your opinion more credibility. It's easy to say you will purchase a Korean brand when they're right next door or a few miles down the road but would you actually purchase one when the closest dealer is hundreds of miles away?

Yes, the first LS dealer I purchased from was 500 miles to the north of me. After using that 25hp SCUT for work that everyone said a 50hp machine would be needed, I was impressed. Was it slower? Yes. Was I in a rush? No. Did it ever need to go back to the dealer? Not for a single problem.

I have heard people bring up the subject of "resale value".... well of course a JD or Kubota is going to bring a higher "used price".... but they cost 15-20% higher to begin with. I sold my LS SCUT for $500 less than what I paid for it after 2 years and 220 hours of use. That equates to costing me $2.27 per hour of use (plus fuel).

When I purchased my second LS, I got a great deal from another dealer that was 550 miles to the south of me. I don't have any immediate plans to sell it right now, but I did find out that I could now sell it for about $2-3K more than what I paid for it. I have this one for 2 1/2 years and 340 hours.... Again, never had to go back to the dealer, never had a problem.

Between both of these tractors, I saved over $15K vs. buying Kubotas. Buying JD would have cost even more.

I know of 3 other LS owners locally, including a plumbing contractor using his LS commercially. All 3 purchased AT LEAST 500 miles away, one of them purchased 1465 miles away from the dealer. He had one problem... a loader cylinder was leaking. The dealer shipped him a new cylinder under warranty.

I wouldn't hesitate to get another Korean tractor from another distant dealer.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Cahaba, have you bought a tractor yet?

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Oh, another thought..... I was only able to see JD, K, and Mahindra in person when I was initially shopping. I purchased my first LS sight unseen. At least on the second LS, I went to a NH dealer to see their Workmaster 25 on the lot. I then purchased the same LS from the distant dealer. The NH dealer was $4500 more for the same tractor with different decals and a slightly darker blue paint.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

All this discussion makes me think of a slightly heated discussion I had with a coworker about 15 years ago.....

He had a Harley Davidson sportster. I had a Honda Goldwing.
After talking about the bikes for a bit, he started some joking harassment about his being "made in America". His pride was short lived when we walked over to my bike and I pointed to the nice looking letters stamped into the engine side covers --- "made in America".
We then walked over to his bike..... wouldn't you know... there it was.... "Made in China" stamped right on his engine block.

He didn't know what to say.....

The moral of the story: Just because it is made "elsewhere", doesn't mean that it's inferior, not going to last, or not going to do the job it was made to do.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I have a 2007 Sportster, it doesn't say made in china anywhere on the engine.

BTW, I also have a Goldwing.

SR

 

[Cahaba Valley Farm]

Cahaba, have you bought a tractor yet?

In the process of it as we speak.

 

[rScotty]

Oh, another thought..... I was only able to see JD, K, and Mahindra in person when I was initially shopping. I purchased my first LS sight unseen. At least on the second LS, I went to a NH dealer to see their Workmaster 25 on the lot. I then purchased the same LS from the distant dealer. The NH dealer was $4500 more for the same tractor with different decals and a slightly darker blue paint.

That's interesting. I confess that actually seeing something makes a big difference to me...much more than price. I like to see how the manufacturer solved the little problems that you learn to recognize as being common to any type of manufacture.

No matter who is king of the market right now, it's a sure bet that someone else is going to come along and do it all better - and for less money.... at least initially. And a pretty good bet that ten years from now we won't have to guess who was the winner because it will be common knowledge. Maybe it's going to be LS this time around; I wouldn't know. There just aren't enough of them locally to compare.

I went with Kubota because I was looking for several features not common in tractors but common to TLBs.
Kubota makes a wide variety of machinery and that did impress me. Among those machines it turned out that Kubota was building a darn good compact TLB - and nobody else was making one at all. Still aren't. I wish they were. Competition always seems to make things better.

rScotty