Looking for first Yanmar

[clemsonfor]

I am sure it was more than 900? Maybe it had a different meter put in at a rebuild? Maybe not.

A sleeved engine can be rebuilt an infinite amount of times in theory. You push the sleeves out. The sleeves are pressed into the block and the piston goes in the sleeve or liner. This allows the liner to either be honed in a rebuild or if destroyed or gouged out it can be replaced and in any combination either new piston and rings or if you hone a liner you can use the same pirston and new rings maybe able to get an oversize ring but usually honeing is not doing much but removing a glaze. An unsleeved motor is like in your car or truck. to rebuild it they would have to bore out any damage to the cylinder walls and then use and oversize piston and ring to take up the slack. You can only do this about once before the block material gets to thin and would not allow the use of that motor anymore. This is where the lined or sleeved motor comes in as a better thing. As long as a piston or some damage to the block has not occured you can use that block and rebuild it infanitly. NOw in these little over engineered tractors how many times would one rebuild one??? Hopefully never need to but if you do, you can get all the parts from Hoye and resleeve these motors and put to bearing and pistons and rings in and have the head serviced and will be as good as new for 30 more years. I am sure the same is true to the unsleeved motors should last just as long you would just have to have a shop bore the block out which means taking the block to them or the tractor to do the work where as the other you can rebuild as a whole unit still in the tractor.

And as far as mud goes i can tell you i can get my 2wd ym2000 in places i really should not be in!!! This means through all kinds of mudholes in the woods. NOw if your on slopes i dont think i would take a 4wd tractor on any slopes that are that muddy anyway as it will also probably slid down hill but will still last longer as its traction would be on all 4 tires. 2wd tractors are not to be compared to 2wd trucks. a tractor with the back tires diff locked will go through some pretty deep sloppy mud...stuff that would stick a 4wd truck.

 

[clemsonfor]

i see yall beat me to it. I opened this earlier this mourning here at work. Got side tracked and did other things and finially came back to this thread to respond. I see i have been beat to it by several posts

 

[woolyAcres]

i see yall beat me to it. I opened this earlier this mourning here at work. Got side tracked and did other things and finially came back to this thread to respond. I see i have been beat to it by several posts

I appreciate all the input. Based on how well these little engines are built, as winston said, it's probably not a big deal in the overall evaluation of the tractor. I'm grateful for the education nonetheless.

I'll keep browsing Craigslist to see what's out there. I really do appreciate all the opinions, evaluations, and education. And certainly do appreciate California's photos. That latest photo could have been taken out my back window! Where I am in PA gets LOTS of rain so we look like that most of the year. When we're not under snow that is.

 

[California]

4wd is nice but in my opinion YM2000 is the size where you break over the line to what Clemsonfor is describing - big rear tires plus a locked differential will pull you through muddy places where the small front tires Yanmar uses won't make much difference. Drive to the front wheels is important to make the thing turn where you want it to go assuming dirt not mud, but for bad mud it will generally work better to put the loader bucket down and toboggan the front end instead of trying to pull with the front wheels - they just make deep ruts that they have to climb out of. Steering to one side doesn't do anything, it just makes the back work harder to push them while they are sideways.

A loader is the best thing you could have to pull or push the tractor when its really bogged down - well that plus tugging with the backhoe too. I won't clutter this page of the thread with more photos but I have one where I dug out a stump, drove across the fill to compact it like I usually do, and discovered mud fill 3 ft deep doesn't support driving over like normal earth fill. It took 5~10 minutes to inch the YM240 forward a couple of ft and climb out of that hole.

 

[woolyAcres]

I won't clutter this page of the thread with more photos

Nonesense. I love the photos and I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd appreciate seeing your tractor up to or beyond the axles in mud.

 

[California]

Wooly, your place is green year round? That sounds gorgeous. I see pictures of the Eastern woods and greenbelts and that seems like a different world from the severe dry summers here.

At least our recent hot spell - up to 109 - has passed and this coastal zone is back to normal summer weather. 9:30 am here and it hasn't reached 60 degrees yet. The overnight fog is gradually lifting to thick overcast and the sun should burn through around noon. I should be out picking the apples we store in the second refrigerator for family use later.

 

[woolyAcres]

My desire for 4WD is based on two things. The first is snow/ice. I need a machine I can use to keep my 700' up-and-down driveway clear in winter. Currently I have a 20HP Wheel Horse (2wd)with a plow on the front. I've loaded the tires and have chains for winter and that works reasonably well. Better in fact than the FEL on my father's 4WD to be honest, but maybe that's not a fair fight. His ag tires aren't loaded and don't do well on slippery compacted snow/ice. The wheel horse will probably be sold to make room/money for a new tractor. It's a good little tractor and very capable in the snow, but it can't do any of the other larger things I want/need (loader, 3PT hitch, etc). It does have a 5' mowing deck with it so getting a tractor that has some type of mower will be necessary if I want to replace the wheel horse.

The second reason for wanting 4WD is the interest in a loader. My experience with the larger NH suggests that 4WD is a big help when it comes to front-end loader work. My father had an old David Brown 2WD with FEL that he used for years, but the 4WD NH does things you'd never have considered with the old David Brown.

I'm curious about this crossover point California and clemsonfor are talking about. Is there a series or size of these old yammers that have a different body style? The 186 that I saw photos of appeared to be a bit wider in stance and with fatter tires (at least on the front). I thought that looked different than most older Yanmars which are somewhat distinctive with with tall and skinny tires. I think I'm partial to the wider tires for stability and traction; even going so far as to consider getting industrial tires for the wider stance, though I've heard they aren't any good in mud.

There's a very nice, clean 336 for sale a couple hours from me. It appears to have a larger stance. Maybe it's the turf tires? Asking price is $22K without loader. Well, well out of my price range, and apparently other's as well because it's been for sale for a more than a month.

 

[woolyAcres]

Wooly, your place is green year round? That sounds gorgeous. I see pictures of the Eastern woods and greenbelts and that seems like a different world from the severe dry summers here.

It's green here from about mid-April until mid-October when the leaves fall off the trees. Here's a photo from my Dad's place (maybe the worst view of it frankly). This was a couple weeks ago- 3 weeks into one of the driest stretches we've had in years. Foreground is mowed as part of the yard around the house. Other side of the fence is cow pasture. Neighbor down the road is having his land timbered and the crew is selling slab wood- $15/bundle for hardwoods. These bundles weigh close to 4000#. That's what the excavator was for- getting them unloaded from the truck. Just to prove we're still on topic, that excavator has a very nice Yanmar engine in it. Thing runs great!

 

[California]

Nonesense. I love the photos and I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd appreciate seeing your tractor up to or beyond the axles in mud.

Well if you insist ...
Here's the 2013 instance I described, inching out of a mud stump-hole fill that one side sunk into when I tried to compact it. You can't drive out of bottomless mud when the weight rests on the chassis instead of on the tires. 4wd wouldn't have helped, the front wheel on the opposite side was off the ground.

I have another photo where I'm removing a stump in the rain, and tried to drive across the pile of mud I had just excavated. The tractor simply drove into it instead of climbing the pile. It took me a little while to figure out why it wouldn't move, the backhoe outriggers weren't lifted high enough and served as anchors. Lowering the bucket to rest some weight on the mud dug those rear outriggers in worse. That one was more than ten minutes to get out.

Found the 2009 photo. Again, half the problem is it isn't level, it was working its ways sideways into the excavation as I struggled for traction. As I recall that one was about 20 minutes to try different alternatives. Finally getting the weight off those rear outriggers (using the backhoe to both lift, and tug backward) was the key.

 

[woolyAcres]

That's a job well done. Both getting stuck and getting un-stuck. I love it.

There are a few YM240s on the regional Craigslist. 2WD like your's but without loader. You don't seem to miss the 4WD with loader? You mentioned your opinion of the 186D. What are your thoughts on the 240?