Best Buy? YM 1401 vs. YM 1610D

[LMTC]

I'm not sure I've been adequately clear. It's not a question of faulty work. Nor one of having substantial warranty. It may run for a year...maybe more, though probably not from the calls we get. The point is....when you take 5 worn out tractors and assemble one from the parts that are still working, you may have a running tractor...but one whose parts have varying amounts of usage and wear, so you cannot even guess at the use the "tractor" has had. One whose origin is tractors used so much or so badly that a major component had failed. Not even the same as pulling an engine from one machine to another. We are talking all or most of the parts coming from low dollar high wear machines.

Find a dealer who has been at this 8-10 years and who sells those scrap pack tractors and will stand behind them with his reputation, and then I say maybe buy one. Why do the vast majority of larger/older dealers in this market shun the recons? Because they offer a better deal for the customer and we don't want the customer to have a better deal? Hardly. Stop and think about it for a few minutes. If they are such a great buy and will serve you just as well as anything else in this market, why aren't dealers long established in this market offering them? The answer is that it is highly likely they will NOT serve you long and well, and the savvy dealer values his reputation more than a quick profit margin. Two of the three primary importers of the recons (as best I know)were in GA, and are all but shut down at this point in time. Quality and reputation are catching up. Ask this seller where he will get you parts..ask to see proof of it. Ask him if he will work on the tractor for you. Ask for customer references who bought, oh, say three years ago or more.

Someone has said it before on one or more of these forums..."there ain't no free lunch".
You sometimes will not get all you paid for, but it's a cold day in hell when you get dramatically more than you paid for.

 

[jimstractors]

You might also check with Homestead Tractor in Apple Valley, CA. He imported a bunch on these VN refurbs a couple of years ago. Not anymore, it almost put him out of business.

 

[scrinch]

I lived in SE Asia for years and I still work there a lot. Not VN but equivalent. I've spent plenty of time in little places like the tractor-rebuild shops you see in the photos. The "mechanics" you find there are wonderfully talented and inventive. They can fix just about anything with some wire, a welder, coconut husk, and an old dirty rag. In fact I had a garden cart made out of some old rebar, motorcycle tires, and old pieces of pipe. I brought it home and still use it all the time.

What you don't get from places like that is standard, uniform, well engineered anything. The guys that work in those shops have little formal education and have no idea that Americans are looking at these Japanese tractors as standardized, well-engineered products. If they can take a dozen worn out tractors and turn them into a half-dozen running tractors then they have done a great job. In their market they'll sell a tractor to a guy who will use it until it doesn't run any more and then work another miracle on it with more used parts. He cares not a whit that it doesn't use the original size of fuel filter...he cares about his kid being able to finish grade school before having to get a job selling chewing gum on the streets.

So while I don't have any experience with VN-rebuilt Yanmars per se, based on my experience with other equipment, the VN rebuilds are probably wonderful and have their place in this world. But if you are looking for a machine for which you can look into a manual and with confidence find the part number that you need, where everything is put together the way it was drawn in the blueprints, that may be worn but is still OEM, this likely isn't it.