Sorry guys, I posted the land/use info in the General Forum. I pretty much narrowed it down to Kubota now because they are running a lot less than JD for a comparable setup. Land/use info below:
Have a house outside of Houston TX on 4 acres. Mostly flat all open no trees or obstacles. The property does slope off to a pond and grass right up to the water almost. All along the front and side there is a 15-20’ wide V-shaped drainage ditch which needs to be cut. Some of the “field” part is smooth other parts are rough with 6-12” clumps of grass in some areas, some areas eroded near the pond, some areas are muddy and some areas are pretty rough not to mention the sometimes foot high fire ant mounds.
Photos Here!
Have a Scotts 20hp 48” cut riding mower. The Scotts is fantastic for cutting the nice St. Augustine sod that is around the house but once in the field it isn’t as good. It gets the job done but I feel I am tearing it (& me) up trying to cut everything. On the grass clumps the ride is like riding over bowling balls. The eroded areas I have to stay away from as the holes will swallow the tires and the thing gets stuck even it a little standing water. It does the drainage ditches pretty well with a few areas being just too steep. The Scotts will be kept for around the house.
About 90% of the use of the new tractor will be cutting the grass. I want to smooth out the rough, bumpy and eroded areas. We have some areas that are low and need to be filled with dirt for better drainage. We have too much landscaping and I want to move 10 cubic yards of mulch around in the spring and about 5 or so touch up in the summer. So a loader is definitely in!
I forgot to price the 7800, but I got a price of $12,400 at a second dealer (whose prices were a few hundred more on everything than the first dealer).
I find the BX to be too small. Yes it’s a “real tractor” (as one of the salesmen told me /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif) but it’s not much bigger than my Scotts. I know my property and it would swallow up the BX.
I got to use my neighbors
L3000, it was nice but a little too big for what I need, plus it left a few dents from the ag tires in the yard when I used it to spread some mulch.
I am leaning heavily toward the 7500, it sounds like it should be good for what I want to do with a tractor. My only reservation is do I want/need to go bigger and more powerful? There is only about a $2700 difference between the 7500 and the 2710 or the 7800. I would easily pay that IF it would be beneficial to me but I don’t want to go too big for only 4 acres. I was trying to stay around $15,000, the 7500 would be a little under that and the 2710/7800 would be a little over. Again I would pay the extra if I really need it. DO I???
