Seedman,
Sorry to see nobody has replied to your post, but here's a few things to think about:
Where is the steering cylinder leaking from? There's 4 possible places, 2 are easy to fix, and 2 should be covered under warranty.
As far as the PTO shaft leak, call your dealer and have them take a look at it, it's probably as simple as replacing a seal, and again, should probably be covered under warranty. Do all of your PTO powered implements have shafts of the correct length (not too long where they bind at any time while on the tractor?)
When you say "It smokes", how much smoke are you talking about? Is it making a big cloud and clearing out all of the mosquitoes in the county, or are you just smelling the exhaust while working the backhoe? The exhaust is under the right rear axle, so I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility to smell some exhaust while working the backhoe... It's just one of the disadvantages of the horizontal exhaust that Mahindra puts on these tractors.
The 3525 has a constant mesh transmission, with no synchronizers, so it is fairly normal for the gears to grind a bit when changing gears. Be sure that you have the tractor COMPLETELY stopped and the clutch pushed down fully to the 2nd stage. That should minimize the gear grinding. You can't "cheat" these things a bit, or else the gears will grind. You must be FULLY STOPPED and THE CLUTCH FULLY DEPRESSED BEFORE moving the shift lever from one gear to another. This isn't a fault of Mahindra, it is a characteristic of this type of transmission, no matter if it's a John Deere, Kubota, Massey Ferguson, Kioti, Montana, Branson, Century, Belarus, Zetor, whatever. Just the nature of the beast. No way around it other than operator technique. I guess it's possible that the clutch may be dragging, but I doubt it on a 1 year old tractor that hasn't been abused (like riding the clutch, etc...)
