Mahindra Emax25 cab versus John Deere 1025r cab tractors for front snow-blowing

[mogulrider]

Hello all I am a new member from Nova Scotia who has owned a variety of heavy forestry equipment and industrial equipment over the years.

We have built a new house on 70 acres with lots of blown down trees which we will cleanup as the years go by.

The house will have about 3/4 acre of yard with minimal mowing. 1000 feet of gravel driveway. Several gravel parking areas.
Mostly this tractor will be used for light forest cleanup (My big gear with do the rest), firewood collection, gravel road snow-blowing and summer gravel road repair.

Also we have 3 kms of woods road which will be culverted in spots over time and graveled as well. Any backhoe work will be done by a rental tractor for small tight spaces I get for 150 bucks a day. The backhoes for these tractors here in Canada run over $9000 +15% tax so owning one for a few days of work per year does not make no sense.

My Question is around snow-blowing with front blower.

Do any of you have these tractors in this config and do you have an opinion on their capability.
The gravel work will be done by box blade and FEL. Either tractor will do this gravel work easily in my opinion.
I've got 2 porters and a large excavator where they won't.

Its the snow blowing I seek opinion on.

And no I don't need a bigger tractor.
I have forestry gear bigger than the moon so this is not necessary.

The Mahindra and JD have factory cabs, FELs, front blowers in the same config. The Mahindra is 3 grand cheaper.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Mogulrider

 

[MessickFarmEqu]

just an FYI, neither are real 'factory' cabs. They are reselling aftermarket cabs so don't expect the same level of noise reduction \ fit \ comfort of your larger equipment.

 

[mogulrider]

just an FYI, neither are real 'factory' cabs. They are reselling aftermarket cabs so don't expect the same level of noise reduction \ fit \ comfort of your larger equipment.

Yes thanks for that, The Mahindra is a really a rebranded TYM 254 Cab HST. (Which by the way I looked at and was $4,000 more than its twin Mahindra?? Go figure)

The Mahindra is very tight in my opinion. Better than the Deere which I believe is a tektite.
It was kind of a loose connection around the bottom I noticed with some more engine noise in the cab.

The Mahindra was much tighter and quiet. (relatively speaking they were both louder than my other gear for sure pound for pound. MY Hyundai "vator" is dead quiet and the best excavator we have ever owned by far.)

I was wondering more about performance and reliability. I have to say both seemed like high quality gear. A old style tractor frame is not what I need. I need a modern frame built for these front blowers...

 

[pike14130]

In my experience using a snowblower to clear a 600Ft double wide gravel driveway, the problems I found using a 6ft blower off my 3 PT 540 RPM on a gravel driveway, is that at night you get a meteor shower and defoliate any shrubs nearby. I found this to be true no matter how one adjusts the hitch height, tilt, whether the drive is froze, etc.. You get the added bonus of taking a 1/2 inch (13mm for the guy north of the border) of gravel off each year.

I ended up using an 8Ft. commercial Fisher Snowplow and frame from some guy selling one for $100 USD along side the road. Another $300USD gets you a new cutting edge, pivot pins, 2 snow shoes and a few of the trip springs with mounts. You can weld up your own trip spring compressor if you really think about it. I built a HD (3" x3/8") square tube adapter frame to mount the plow onto the JD quick attach of my JD4510 FEL. You will probably need to pickup one of the "universal" skid steer mount that Northern Hydraulics sells for $100, buy a heavy duty one if available. The Fisher uses a bottom trip, a must on a gravel driveway versus a Western which justs flop down every time you try to push heavy snow. The adapter frame allows the use of factory Fisher turn cylinders. I did need to fabricate a mount for the top of the blade to the frame adapter. This allows some form of rigidity and flex, so that when you inevitably get stuck in the roadside ditch pushing snow back, you can tilt the bucket and "push" yourself out. Trust me when I say this, using a FEL attached Western plow and frame in that way, will destroy plow and mount. The big thing here is you can get down pressure to scrape accumulated snow from vehicle tracks. That down pressure is not available with any front or rear snowblower, they either skate on shoes or 3PT top tilt. Oh and get a set of 2 link spacing or ring chains for the back, rubber tires don't do any good on the ice and snow, worth the $150 USD from ICE. Depending on the amount of clearance between the rear tire, the top fender and the tire to inside of the side of the fender, you may be able to go only with a "bar" style chains. The chains on the JD are double rings, I have 6 inches of clearance all around and work well in snow or out in the woods dragging whole trees down to be cut for firewood.

An 8Ft wide snow plow will probably be too heavy and require too much weight at the rear of your small tractor. You might find a Fisher that was on a Jeep or cut down a more commonly found 8 footer to fit the Mahindra, still needing weight or buy a rear 5FT 3PT PTO driven blower for the extra weight and utility. Six of one , half a dozen of another. If you do go with this setup, my JD has an "option" to "float" the tilt of the bucket. This bit of "give" allows the plow to follow the dips and rises in the driveway, keeps the blade from scalping. Not sure if you have this "float" option on the Mahindra. I would suggest NOT trying to mount the Fisher plow to the bucket of the Mahindra. You have to mount the Fisher too far down to clear the trips, causing a whole bunch of problems trying to keep the plowing geometry/force low enough to the ground.

You still will scrape gavel off of the driveway but most of it will be in spots that you can spread it back out onto the driveway once the snow melts. I plow the driveway into a convient spot and then if and when the piles get too big, especially at the bottom of the driveway at the roadway, I blow the snow piles back to allow trucks to see me and I them before I pull out.

I am looking to purchase a Kioti CS series 2510 for mowing the 1 1/2 acres of hilly front yard. This is about the same size as the Mahindra you were asking about using a blower on 1000Ft of driveway. Personally, I think bigger is better when plowing, especially doing 8ft versus 60" snowblower. I'm not sure if I would use something like that on a large driveway as yours. Your mileage will vary.

See attached pictures for the JD4510 front plow Setup