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I've never added anything to fuel since ethanol was added to gasoline some years ago. (Before that, I put alky in the gas tanks in the winter, to soak up any moisture.) I ran a Japanese-American International Harvester gasoline tractor for 45 years before replacing it with a Mahindra diesel five...

I say it can't be done. I used to try; I don't bother any more.

I've been brush-hogging for fifty-odd years, with a 1950s Allis Chalmers, a 1975 International Harvester (actually a Japanese Bison with an American overcoat), and a more recent Mahindra 26xxx. The Mahindra has a Yanmar engine that has never given trouble, and my next-generation has an...

I have a Weego 44S, and it's a wonder. Haven't needed it to start my tractor, but it has fired up my Subaru Legacy and my zero-turn lawn mower in seconds.

My father-in-law used to throw any dodgy fuel into his tractor to burn it up. Of course that was before alcohol in gasoline, and the tractor was a 1950s Allis Chalmers.

>"For a mile of road to clear, I wouldn't even think about a rear blade. Not because it won't work, but because I'd have to go to the chiropractor after every snow plowing session. Your neck will be killing you to look backwards for that amount of time." That was my reaction as well, and my...

I'd buck the oak into firewood lengths and bring them home by trailer or front-end loader. (Leaves the rubbish in the woods, too, rather than importing it.)

It was drilled into me long ago that I should NEVER hold the starter down for more than two or three seconds, but should let the starter motor rest for at least that length of time between efforts. I sometimes see the gray cloud of smoke you mention coming out the front of Mahindra Baba when she...

>35 thousand for my 1997 Ford F350 long bed Wow. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published a chart showing average used-car prices. I took note of 9-year-old cars averaging $15,000. I paid $22,000 for mine when it was new in 2014. As for carrying lots of cash, it's been years since I owned...

Well, I'm glad to have this information though I don't think it applies to me, since I never heard of this emissions stuff (25 hp Mahindra three years old). But I want to say that the HST is wonderful. I can brush-hog while backing up! With my late father-in-law's International Harvester I would...

I've been plowing in southeastern New Hampshire for more than fifty years. Always with chains on the rear tires, on a 25-30 hp tractor (a 1952 Allis Chalmers, a 1975 International 284, and a recent Mahindra 1626). Our driveway is 1/3 mile, all gravel except for the parking area and a steep...

Never used it myself, but there is a group of old-airplane buffs who swear by it: https://www.pipercubforum.com/marvel.htm Note the reference to "mogas" for old planes. I flew a Piper Cub that had been modified for automotive gasoline purchased at the terminal before alcohol was added. The...

Yeah, this thread reminded me of working on a farm in Concord MA in the 1940s. I was the little kid so I got to rid on the sickle-bar cutter (intended to be horse-drawn) behind Dad driving the Allis Chalmers tractor. The wheels drove the sickle-bar, chop-chop. My job was to raise the bar when...

When Henry Ford finally gave up on the Model T because he had the wonderful Model A in mind, he just shipped all the Model Ts on hand to the Ford dealers, along with an invoice. If they had to sell them at a loss in order to get the new Model A, that was there tough luck.

>Clutch (some HST machines have a clutch) Yeah, mine does. Mahindra 1626 HST. I suppose it's another way to ensure somebody is sitting in the driver's seat.

I got my log splitter from Sears about 50 years ago. It is now mounted on its third tractor. Three-point hitch. Runs off the tractor hydraulics. Slow, but I'll be 91 in a couple weeks and I'm in no hurry.

Well, I don't know where "here" is, but if it's in the continental US you can order T-6 from Amazon. https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=rotella+t6+5w-40+synthetic&crid=3DLDGE0ZU4TGO

We had the barn roof re-shingled a few years ago. As I came down the driveway on the tractor, I saw one of the lads hop from the ground onto the bed of the pickup truck. No hands. I couldn't believe it, so when I got there I asked him to do it again, and he did. This was pre-Covid and I was...

24.73 / gal at Amazon today, free Prime delivery if you're a subscriber, though it does say list price $49.41. I last bought it in 2019 for $20.97. I had the dealer do the 50-hour service, so I've had no occasion to buy another gallon.

Mine was a hand truck. Finally took it to my favorite garageman to fix, and he gave the same advice: get solid tires. I bought a Milwaukee hand truck from Amazon in 2013 for $69.97, and those tires still haven't lost a pound of pressure. Amazon is now out of stock, but Walmart.com has it for...

During the War years 1943-45 my father was caretaker at a mansion in Concord MA. To get gasoline for his two 12-cylinder Lincoln Continentals, the owner became a farmer and hired Dad, two Norwegians up the road, some teenagers from Boston who bunked in the former Conservation Corps barrack, and...

Local rules require burning after dark and with a permit unless there's snow on the ground, so I burn once a year when snow is on the ground. I do have to phone the fire department to say I'm burning. The fire-starter is a few balled-up copies of the Wall Street Journal, a few pieces of split...

I leave the drive shaft / slip clutch on a bench in the garage; the rest of the brush hog sits in the woods on 8x8 chunks of wood. But I like that idea of putting a plastic bucket over the gearbox. I'll do it this afternoon! (Thanks, Cory B!)

Interesting about the stand-up mower. I can see where much more weight is put on the drive wheels, which may be what causes your problem. I've never experienced divoting in my Toro zero-turn with a seat, which more evenly distributes the weight. Plus when I'm mowing an open lawn I generally go...

I drove my VW Beetle from New Hampshire to California in 1966. Many or most cars in those years had no oil filter. When I visited a pal in New Orleans, I emptied all my belongings into his apartment and got the oil changed. Didn't dare go the whole 3K miles without a service!

chipmunk

>climate gets below freezing in the winter, you have to heat up the battery with a blanket for it to take a charge Good grief. I remember going home for Christmas vacation and not having the temp go above zero for a week. I have a neighbor with a BMW plug-in electric car (with a motorcycle...

Well, I have a vivid memory of climbing a hill in a 1952 Allis Chalmers tractor (wide-track, not the narrow gait of the pre-War models). I must have stopped midway for some reason, and when I started up again I apparently engaged the clutch too quickly. The front wheels rose off the ground for...

Yeah, $30/month for heated seats in New Zealand! (Perhaps they only need it one month a year?) I won't even rent Word or Quicken. I buy 10-year-old install disks secondhand. Sigh, and I've reached the point where I'm thinking I need a heated steering wheel in my next car. Maybe I can rent it...

Yes, I have it, and it's great. LockNLube Heavy Duty Pistol-Grip Grease Gun $77 at Amazon. >For just a few bucks more, you can get a DeWalt battery powered grease gun. 20 More like three times the price, if the next poster is correct. It was painful for me to opt for the $77 brand. No way...

Well, this has nothing to do with Kubota. Why don't you just call or email 3M and ask their advice? That's what I did when I needed something to protect me from spraying herbicide. 3M suggested a mask and I bought it from Amazon for twenty bucks or so.

Our house is forty years old. Cedar roof shingles were replaced after about 25 years. Cedar clapboards fastened with quality galvanized nails (maybe impossible to obtain now that everything is from China) still going strong. We're about 75 feet from salt water and used stainless staples on the...

Amazing what I can learn on this forum!

That bottle jack is the wildest thing I've ever seen, though I admit we don't have trees that bit around in my part of the country. Never mind the plunging cut! I'd call Orion tree service in the next town over.

>If you really have a lot of used motor and hydraulic oils it may be worth your while to buy or build a waste oil heater for your house. The filling station / garage I used to rely on had one of these furnaces. Worked a charm. Then the young man who ran the station had it sold out from under...

Hire a pro!

Yeah, I'm impressed by the Ford Lightning, but alas I'm not really in the market for a truck. We run two cars, one tractor, and a lawn mower. Also a propane Kohler generator. I would consider a $30K EV car with 300 mile range. 200 miles doesn't cut it for me. I'm a hundred miles from a ski...

Yeah, we put as much fill into our foundation as on our driveway, which measures 1820 feet. The east and south elevations have a steep slope. My old riding mower would choke while mowing it sideways. The new zero-turn 42-inch Toro Timecutter has no problem CLIMBING the slope; the difficulty is...

Well, we have 42 acres but most of it is woods or fields, for which I use a 3 pt hitch brush hog. For the lawns (maybe half an acre? I don't know) I have a 42-inch zero-turn Toro Timecutter that I bought 2014. Monstrously heavy to unpack; I lucked out when two equally large plumbers came by and...

After years of holding out, I finally bought a girlie tranny (Subaru Legacy 2015) and got quite used to it. I reckon I'll get used to the EV as well. (There was a time when I thought the Scout was adorable, but all I could afford then was a Harley 125cc, actually a German war reparations thing...

Well, what was the date, and what was the state? The local Irving station charges $4.99/gal for diesel according to Gasbuddy today (NH Apr 25).

I can't imagine plowing snow with turf tires, or indeed going into my woods, which tend to be on the wet side.

Ah, the days when there were gravel pits with gravel in them! Hereabouts, all we have now is crushed rock.

Whoa! What is regeneration anyhow? I owned an International (Bison) 284 for for nearly forty years and am on my third year with Mahindra Baba, and I have never heard of such a thing.

>The kubota dealer is 5 miles away. The Deere dealer is 20miles. That 15 miles doesn't sound like much, but I'll bet the pickup/delivery charges are significantly different. I'd got with the Kubota since working on these modern tractors is above my payscale.

I inherited a 1975 International Harvester 284 from my late father-in-law. It never went to a dealer for 35 years and the carb died. (Impossible to replace; had to be rebuilt.) A couple years ago the water pump died. They're sold on Amazon! But I despaired of every actually replacing it, and...

I'm with the twenty-minute guy. Basically, I go out and plug it in, come back to the house and have a cup of coffee, go back out and start Mahindra Baba. That's only if it's below 10 deg F. Otherwise it starts right up.

Where are the small Deeres manufactured? Deere was on my short list because it's the nearest dealer to me, and they tuned up my Stihl chainsaw from time to time. But I gave them my want list based on the online options, and all I got back was the one 25-30 hp tractor they had in stock, as if...

I've been brush-hogging the woods and small fields since 1975. The first rotary was a five-foot tow-behind I inherited with the tractor from my late father-in-law. Tractor was a fairly new International Harvester 284 (so 28 hp), actualy a Japanese Bison wearing an American overcoat. the rotary...

I have a steep hill on the road side of our driveway. My previous tractor was a 1975 International Harvester 284 (actually a Japanese Bison with an American overcoat) with agricultural tires. It was useless on the hill even with chains. (The hill is asphalt, but more important after the first...

>That's true but the ad is from Belgrade, Maine. Not for nothing do we New Hampshiremen call them Maniacs.

We often have this problem in coastal New Hampshire. I've done it both ways: get up at 2 a.m. and plow through the night to stay ahead of it, OR wait till next day so I can plow away the ice on top of the snow. The breakpoint for me is about six inches if it's dry, four inches if it's wet...

Southern living? I've never heard of studded tractor tires, though studded snow tires on cars used to be popular here in NH. (And my daughter in Alaska swears by them.) I used tractor chains on asphalt from 1968 to 1982, and on some asphalt / mostly gravel since 1982, and my neighbors likewise...

My Mahindra has the same problem. No doubt I should shift more often. Thanks for the tips.

Reminded me of the 1960s when old six-volt car batteries could no longer do the work demanded of them. A garage downtown specialized in converting them to use an eight-volt battery, which used to be common for houses running on 32-volt electricity. (The house powerplant had four batteries for...

I avoid insurance except for liability on our cars and liability and fire insurance on our house (and there I go for the maximum deductible). Over the years I've saved more in insurance policies than I would have lost by theft or wreckage. Tractor doesn't have a license plate; on my old tractor...

We were fortunate in building our house in 1981-2 when interest rates hit 20% and people just stopped building. We found a contractor who was not only desperate but honest. We showed him the plans of a house we wanted to copy (while extending the dimensions two feet in both directions to...

I have a WorkSaver plow on my Mahindra Baba. It cost a fortune and in the first winter (last winter) one of the skid shoes broke and WorkSaver said the dealer would have to deal with it. So what's a warranty worth? I had to take the broken thing 20 miles to the dealer and wait a few days while...

Plastic lasts a long time. I bought a Korean microwave at BJ's Wholesale Club some years ago, and about ten years later I noticed that the controls seemed to be disintegrating. I investigated and found that I'd never removed the plastic store protection. Did that, and it lasted another ten...

How long did it take Sears to run a check on that Diehard? I miss Sears. I suppose their lifetime guarantees helped speed their demise along. (I claimed refunds on a computer that my daughter messed up entirely and also on a tire that was my fault. I felt guilty when they closed.)

>I got the optional hardened liner for the blower because I pick up millions of acorns. We had so many acorns last year it wasn't safe to walk across the backyard -- like ball bearings underfoot. None this year. The squirrels are going to have a hard winter.

The new four-door Jeeps are really a handsome vehicle. But OMG they cost north of $40,000! When Fiat took over the bankrupt Chrysler company, one of the big lures for the US govt was the promise that the Fiat 500 would at last give Americans a really serviceable sub-compact car. How did that...

>In any case, looks like a year in the radiator degraded the coolant, which is strange. Very strange indeed. Years ago I used to change coolant every second year. Now it's every five years that I even think about it.

A snowblower might suffice on an asphalt driveway. Wouldn't it just chew through shear bolts on gravel? I can't imagine using a rear-mounted snowblower for more than a few feet of asphalt (unless it were possible to use it while driving forward). As perhaps you can guess, I use a front-mounted...

Well, we don't have minus 20F here in the Northeast, and I don't think I've ever plowed at zero degrees, but my go-to boots used to be L L Bean Ice Fisherman Boots, which were just renamed Canadian boots, but of course they're made in China now and they cracked in a year or two. So I've switched...

If you can get US galvi, I suppose that's okay, but around here everyone except the rare marine-supply store stocks China-made. For me, there's none closer than a two-hour round trip. I live on salt water and have pretty much given up on galvi. I use stainless steel from Amazon. It's China-made...

I bought a Mahindra 1526 a couple years ago. I think it's very poorly designed. Half the time when I dismount, the flashers are activated. It takes me half an hour to check the oil. It was $10K cheaper and the dealer was closer, but I'm not very happy with it. Cost me nearly $1000 for the...

Definitely it's hard on the wheels! My late father-in-laws 1952 Allis Chalmers's loaded wheels were so rusted that a couple of times one of them fell off when I braked too hard. He bought a 1975 Intl Harvester 284 (actually a Japanese Bison, which he discovered first time he checked the coolant...

To get rid of them (I'd do that first!) soak the wood with Citri-Fresh Bee Stop. Amazon sells it by the gallon jug.

Yeah, I agree that you should check your start's lemon law. They're usually intended for automobiles first of all, but perhaps tractors as well. Calling the consumer protection line of your AG's office can give you good information. There's also the federal CFPB -- make a stink there...

I'm 89, and while I looked at snow blowers I figured that driving backwards would destroy my neck before the winter was over, so I spent about $3500 for a plow rig for my front-end loader. I'm not completely happy with it because it sticks out quite a bit and the FEL on Mahindra Baba does...

My Mahindra salesman by contrast is a wonderful guy, and the service department the one time I used it (to keep my 1975 International Harvester 284 running, which it did for several years) was very good and phoned up for approval on every expense). It's only the Mahindra tractor that's a huge...

I bought a Sears (!) log splitter some forty years ago for a couple hundred dollars including the cost of hydraulic hoses and connectors to power it off my then-International Harvester 284. Though we no longer heat the house with wood (too much dust for Susan Wife), we still go through a cord of...

I haven't yet changed the oil filter. Indeed, I paid north of $900 to have the dealer do it (and other things) last fall for its 50-hour heck. That's almost as much as I paid the same dealer rehabilitate my IH/Bison tractor after more than thirty years of rough service, the only repair work I...

Mahindra 1626 HST. Yeah, it was cheaper than a Kubota, but really, I have never seen a piece of machinery so badly engineered. The manual tells me to check the engine oil every day. What a laugh! I have to raise the hood, remove the starboard side panel, raise the bucket to the ceiling, thread...

I paid about $3500 for a snowplow rig for my Mahindra 1626 and $250 for tire chains two years ago. One-third mile gravel driveway ending in a steep hill. The plowman is an old friend and charges me $100, so call it a thousand dollars for an average winter. But the problem is as stated above: who...

Tire chains are heavy! I have two sturdy galvi nails hammered into facing studs. I hang the end crosspiece of a set of chains from one nail, then with a loud grunt put the other-end crosspiece on top of it. Then I do the same for the other set. A couple of lighter nails on the outer edge of...

When I switched from a 1975 International Harvester 284 to a Mahindra 2616 last year, I was amazed at how bumpy the ride was. I could drive the IH in fourth gear going up the driveway, but I never do that with Mahindra Baba. Glad to read this thread. I'll try taking off the bucket when I'm...

After half a century of breaking my back trying to start Homelite saws (1968-2016), I found happiness with a Stihl EZstart. I don't like the fancy chain tensioner -- the old screw adjustment was a whole lot more precise -- but the saw starts like a charm five years after buying it. I did have...

>I know you are not supposed to put romex in conduit Why not? Safer than burying it, surely!

My tractor is 26 horsepower and has no problem whatever with a four-foot brush hog, whether rotating it or climbing hills with it. For me, five foot is too wide to work comfortably in the woods, which constitutes most of my mowing.

Yeah, the PTO is the most miserable chore of spring and fall. I finally had to get a socket extension so I could remove the shield on my Mahindra 1626. That helped a lot, but I still have to hire a lad with stronger hands than I to do the actual changeover. I'll be 90 in November, which may have...

I was able to give away a truckload of pine when we first built this place. It's white pine; I wouldn't burn it myself: too much creosote for the stove and too many sparks for the fireplace. A friend of mine cleared out a red-pine plantation recently and made a little money selling the wood...

I live in New Hampshire and plow a 1/3-mile driveway ten or twelve times a winter. I'm sure it's a bit colder here than in Tennessee. I'm perfectly warm in a skier's warmup pants, jacket, hat, double gloves, and goggles even in a snowstorm. I opted not to get a cab because it wouldn't fit into...

I bought a hydraulic log splitter from Sears (!) nearly 50 years ago and used it with great success on my father-in-law's International Harvester 28 horsepower tractor, which I then inherited and moved to our new home. I can't believe a stand-alone would have lasted half a century. Last year the...

Well, I'll be 90 in November and I can still lift 5 gal diesel atop the tractor. I put a boat cushion on the metal and a red plastic funnel into the fillup, then tilt the yellow jug to fill. By the time no more diesel runs out, the jug is light enough to levitate sufficient to finish the job. I...

Well, here's a photo of a Worksaver snowplow in its second year of service. We get about ten plowable storms a winter here in southern New Hampshire. On my second outing in December, so about the 12th time the plow was used, the skid shoe fractured. Worksaver was no help at all, but the dealer...