Glad I Bought Chinese Tractor

[ToddW]

Beautiful cabin John, looks very peaceful there.

Todd

 

[johnk]

Thanks Todd,
Built it myself and its a never done thing. It's 50 miles from where I live and it is pretty desolate. Borders 6000 acres of state land. You can never finish the building and finishing part because then you couldn't tell the other half you have to go up there for a couple days to get some work done...Gives me satisfaction that I did it myself...

http://users.adelphia.net/~gizmo/

 

[ToddW]

Gizmo is a good looking boy! A close friend of mine raises and shows Rotties here in Florida, great dogs!

 

[3RRL]

I agree. When you can equate a 'purchase price plus repair costs' with a 'work done' and price issue. It is pretty easy to get a economy or less expensive tractor to pay for itself, dolalr wise.

Worked out great... and as a side bonus.. about 75% o fthe grassy strippings took and grew and i didn't even have to sod behind the house.

All I had invested was the ? 2900$ in the yanmar, and the scoop? 89$ and a rusty old beater 5' box blade for 100$ I found at a junk dealers place.

When i had finished moving that dirt.. i aded up the hours and had easilly paid for that tractor.. was a nice feeling..

Soundguy

Soundguy,
Looks like you were way ahead with the refund, new lawn and a tractor. I was really hoping to reach that "pay back" point with the Kama purchase before something went wrong. As it turns out, the machine is very robust and sturdy. Hopefully she will give me years of great service. Actually, I'm tickled pink and I'll tell you why.
When I was in business, I always bought premium equipment and ended up paying "top dollar" for my machinery. Couple of reasons...I had employees that worked on the machinery so I couldn't afford to have one down and him crying about it. Also had to be reliable and accurate so his work turned out good. Also, at that time there were no imports that were worth a darn...that has changed now. I would always work on the crappiest machine because I could coax it or work it, knowing it's shortcomings, but did not expect that from my men. (for good reason too)
With that in mind, I was really reluctant to buy the Kama because Chinese tractors did not have a great reputation yet. On the other hand, I figured now that I'm retired, I could repair/rebuild anything that was mechanically wrong, as that is what I did anyway. Not on tractors, but machinery in general. So I was really expecting to do some (major) work on it. And instead, I've been able to fix it up by customizing it and the attachments and I'm having so much fun doing that....just tickled pink about that and breaking even or being ahead.
Again, with that in mind, if something DID break that is a major repair (costly), I would consider buying another KM 554 simply because I still have lots of tractor chores to do and the new one will pay for itself too. Not only that, I would have the old one for spare parts now. Ha ha...what an optimist? But really, now I'm hoping that never happens...and I really love my Kama, it is a handsome machine with great lines.

Thanks for the positive replies to the thread.