xcrider08
New member
Well I finally did it. Got tired of pulling weeds by hands and using the little 20 walk behind tiller for trying to keep my tree rows nice and neat on my 2 acre lot. I ordered myself a brand new 42 Befco T30- 542 tiller.
The first dilemma I had when searching for a tiller was my tractor is an oddball. I have a Honda 5518 subcompact tractor. It's a really nice tractor and I got it for dirt cheap, problem with it being is the pto outputs for the front and rear pto's is 2000rpms. I spent hours and hours researching and trying to find a tiller that wasn't in the typical 540rpm or one that could be special ordered for the 2000 rpm gear case. Only came up with 2 companies that made tillers with 2000 rpm gearbox. 1. Honda (which they no longer make and are a miracle if you find one and when u do they want a pretty penny for it) 2. Befco, they made one but everywhere I shopped they wanted $3000+ for it, not including shipping which was making me hesitate buying a tiller for the tractor and just selling everything and starting over.
Thankfully one night shift at work I ran across Eric's website Subcompacttractorworld (user name is SmallTrac on here) and notice he sold befco tillers. He was 1 of 3 people that responded back to me (sent out about 8 different emails to dealers) and was extremely helpful in getting me what I wanted. His communication and knowledge of the product he sells was top notch, and if he didn't know the answer he found out the answers to all my questions that I had. The best part of it all, is he beat everyone else's prices for the tiller by over $1000 and the shipping was fast and the cheapest. I would say I wasn't the easiest person to sell to. Especially for all the questions that I had, but his attitude and response times for everything was great and I would highly recommend anyone who is thinking of ordering a befco tiller to give this man a chance. I would do business with him in a heart beat.
Now onto the tiller, when I ordered the tiller from Eric, it came with cat 1 hook ups, but my tractor has cat 0. For an additional $115 I could have ordered my tiller with cat 0 but I was already spending a lot of money on the tiller I wanted to save some money. With a little research done on this site I found out the difference from cat 0, cat 1 and decided that I would make it work myself and save the money.
The lifting arms wld work, but the top and bottom pins were to big. I ended up spending $6 at the local hardware store and I machined my own pins down to the smaller size that the cat 0 requires.
All in all, im super impressed with my befco tiller. It does a super job, the quality is there, the price was right. So far I only got about 45 minutes of use out of it as we have now went from being super dry fire ban season to monsoon season here in the North Dakota (over 4 of rain in the past week) but I cant wait to get back out there and put it back to work.
Thanks again to Eric (SmallTrac) for hooking me up with a great product.
Some pictures.
The new tiller
machining the new bottom pins
finished product
looks good on the tractor
The first dilemma I had when searching for a tiller was my tractor is an oddball. I have a Honda 5518 subcompact tractor. It's a really nice tractor and I got it for dirt cheap, problem with it being is the pto outputs for the front and rear pto's is 2000rpms. I spent hours and hours researching and trying to find a tiller that wasn't in the typical 540rpm or one that could be special ordered for the 2000 rpm gear case. Only came up with 2 companies that made tillers with 2000 rpm gearbox. 1. Honda (which they no longer make and are a miracle if you find one and when u do they want a pretty penny for it) 2. Befco, they made one but everywhere I shopped they wanted $3000+ for it, not including shipping which was making me hesitate buying a tiller for the tractor and just selling everything and starting over.
Thankfully one night shift at work I ran across Eric's website Subcompacttractorworld (user name is SmallTrac on here) and notice he sold befco tillers. He was 1 of 3 people that responded back to me (sent out about 8 different emails to dealers) and was extremely helpful in getting me what I wanted. His communication and knowledge of the product he sells was top notch, and if he didn't know the answer he found out the answers to all my questions that I had. The best part of it all, is he beat everyone else's prices for the tiller by over $1000 and the shipping was fast and the cheapest. I would say I wasn't the easiest person to sell to. Especially for all the questions that I had, but his attitude and response times for everything was great and I would highly recommend anyone who is thinking of ordering a befco tiller to give this man a chance. I would do business with him in a heart beat.
Now onto the tiller, when I ordered the tiller from Eric, it came with cat 1 hook ups, but my tractor has cat 0. For an additional $115 I could have ordered my tiller with cat 0 but I was already spending a lot of money on the tiller I wanted to save some money. With a little research done on this site I found out the difference from cat 0, cat 1 and decided that I would make it work myself and save the money.
The lifting arms wld work, but the top and bottom pins were to big. I ended up spending $6 at the local hardware store and I machined my own pins down to the smaller size that the cat 0 requires.
All in all, im super impressed with my befco tiller. It does a super job, the quality is there, the price was right. So far I only got about 45 minutes of use out of it as we have now went from being super dry fire ban season to monsoon season here in the North Dakota (over 4 of rain in the past week) but I cant wait to get back out there and put it back to work.
Thanks again to Eric (SmallTrac) for hooking me up with a great product.
Some pictures.
The new tiller
machining the new bottom pins
finished product
looks good on the tractor
