Don't know the laws in Japan now, it's been some time. There smog regulation required a GAS engine or car be rebuilt or replaced somewhere around 50K as a smog measure, smog is really bad over there. Not anything like here where we can run our stuff into the ground. You could buy small 4wd pickups with low millage very cheap here because they couldn't run them after that millage in Japan. Might be the same thing applies to tractors and other diesel stuff there as well. If that's the case, it would be a profitable business to strip out engines out and ship over here, scrap the tractor at the scrap yards, remove the engines and scrap every thing but the engines, sell the engines over here for a return that's going to be much higher value pound for pound shipping. A shipping container would hold 10 times the engines than what it would hold tractors. With all the gray market flap and lawsuits, could get around the legal problems and be a good business decision. 25 years ago they used to ship complete gas engines here for the smaller cars doing the same thing. Most wouldn't pass smog tests in states like California, but lots of folks bought them. I remember walking into a warehouse in Sacramento that had at least 500 of them on the floor strapped to pallets ready to ship. Tractor stuff was mostly ignored with the smog laws, and the tier 4 standards now apply to the year of tractor, they don't look at the engine in it. One possibility of what's going on.
Chris
