At the risk of sounding like I'm putting words in Steve's mouth, I'd like to add something for all of us to think about.
With the internet making endless ammounts of information available to us, sometimes its difficult to separate hard facts from what we are told. I have found myself in this prediciment and try to be careful of what info I pass on if it could be hearsay.
I see this everyday in the automotive industry, customers telling someone with close ties to the product how something works because they read about it on the internet. In fact they could be completely wrong because their source may have been no more than a publisist printing from notes.
The main reason I bring this up is because before I bought the Yanmar I read those same articles Steve posted as reference. I realized by talking to folks directly involved with the product that this was a distorted veiw of the product. Those articles are from a corprate Yanmar stance. They are trying to protect the company by denying the responsibility over these tractors. They dont have the newer mandated saftey devices, they dont have lables for the sensibly challenged to read so they dont hurt themselves, they have some slightly different controls,etc.... None of these things make the gray market tractors less of a tractor, just legaly not supported.
Now, fact of the matter, from the guys that deal with them on a daily basis, these things are not an issue. Arguably the most posular tractor in this country (8N Ford) doesnt have these items either. The responsible dealers like Wayne, Buck, Ernie,etc.. are doing everything they can to provide these saftey features and educate the customer about them before they buy. Tractors in general are simple creatures, a 20-30yr old diesel tractor of any brand should be able to serve you well if it was constructed well in the begining. It seems from what I have read(on the internet /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif) that the Chinese tractors and VN recons are not among the long term reliable tractors. Most of our "American" tractors have proven the reliability of the Japaneese versions over the years.
As I said, we have to be carefull what we read... Kind of like watching the local news, you only get one perception, you need to know "the rest of the story" before deciding or preaching it as fact.
Again Steve, I dont mean to put words into your mouth, this is just my opinion on allot of the info we see on these boards.
With the internet making endless ammounts of information available to us, sometimes its difficult to separate hard facts from what we are told. I have found myself in this prediciment and try to be careful of what info I pass on if it could be hearsay.
I see this everyday in the automotive industry, customers telling someone with close ties to the product how something works because they read about it on the internet. In fact they could be completely wrong because their source may have been no more than a publisist printing from notes.
The main reason I bring this up is because before I bought the Yanmar I read those same articles Steve posted as reference. I realized by talking to folks directly involved with the product that this was a distorted veiw of the product. Those articles are from a corprate Yanmar stance. They are trying to protect the company by denying the responsibility over these tractors. They dont have the newer mandated saftey devices, they dont have lables for the sensibly challenged to read so they dont hurt themselves, they have some slightly different controls,etc.... None of these things make the gray market tractors less of a tractor, just legaly not supported.
Now, fact of the matter, from the guys that deal with them on a daily basis, these things are not an issue. Arguably the most posular tractor in this country (8N Ford) doesnt have these items either. The responsible dealers like Wayne, Buck, Ernie,etc.. are doing everything they can to provide these saftey features and educate the customer about them before they buy. Tractors in general are simple creatures, a 20-30yr old diesel tractor of any brand should be able to serve you well if it was constructed well in the begining. It seems from what I have read(on the internet /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif) that the Chinese tractors and VN recons are not among the long term reliable tractors. Most of our "American" tractors have proven the reliability of the Japaneese versions over the years.
As I said, we have to be carefull what we read... Kind of like watching the local news, you only get one perception, you need to know "the rest of the story" before deciding or preaching it as fact.
Again Steve, I dont mean to put words into your mouth, this is just my opinion on allot of the info we see on these boards.