Mahindra vs. Kubota

[RedRiver]

fyi, check out this thread for more info that hasn't been posted here............two important things I see in that thread.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/mahindra-owning-operating/124493-review-4500-a-2.html

Post #1
"Warrenty expired the month it started knocking and factory says "tough luck"."


Post #9 in the thread
"The engine started knocking last October but being out of work left a seriously deep hole in our finances so I let it sit until spring. "

Which is it?

if you are going to neglect to try and get it looked at and/or repaired under warranty who's fault is it?

fyi, I haven't seen any problems with the 4500 engines. The only Mahindra I've seen throw a rod in the 6 years I've been around them was a 5 year old 4505 that was a rental unit. It had been severely abused by both the owner and the people who rented it. Also they are changing the engines to adjust the emissions to the new EPA standards, I think you will realize sooner or later all brands are having to do this.

Regardless, your dealer should try their best to go to bat for you with Mahindra but sometimes its' hard to do that when the issue has not been brought to their attention for almost a year. The track record of avoiding a warranty issue for almost a year, leaving a tractor in the middle of the field all winter, and attempting to drive it even when you realize something major may be wrong is just not a good thing in the manufacturers eyes. Sometimes small simple problems turn into big expensive problems just due to neglecting to address the possible issue.

In the end, I hope you get this all sorted out and I wish you the best of luck but coming on the web and bashing a brand name is not the way to go about this especially considering your circumstances of what has not been done on your part.

 

[jasperab]

fyi, check out this thread for more info that hasn't been posted here............two important things I see in that thread.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/mahindra-owning-operating/124493-review-4500-a-2.html

Post #1
"Warrenty expired the month it started knocking and factory says "tough luck"."


Post #9 in the thread
"The engine started knocking last October but being out of work left a seriously deep hole in our finances so I let it sit until spring. "

Which is it?

if you are going to neglect to try and get it looked at and/or repaired under warranty who's fault is it?

fyi, I haven't seen any problems with the 4500 engines. The only Mahindra I've seen throw a rod in the 6 years I've been around them was a 5 year old 4505 that was a rental unit. It had been severely abused by both the owner and the people who rented it. Also they are changing the engines to adjust the emissions to the new EPA standards, I think you will realize sooner or later all brands are having to do this.

Regardless, your dealer should try their best to go to bat for you with Mahindra but sometimes its' hard to do that when the issue has not been brought to their attention for almost a year. The track record of avoiding a warranty issue for almost a year, leaving a tractor in the middle of the field all winter, and attempting to drive it even when you realize something major may be wrong is just not a good thing in the manufacturers eyes. Sometimes small simple problems turn into big expensive problems just due to neglecting to address the possible issue.

In the end, I hope you get this all sorted out and I wish you the best of luck but coming on the web and bashing a brand name is not the way to go about this especially considering your circumstances of what has not been done on your part.

Warranty expired in October 2007-the month it started knocking-I didn't know what the problem was and did not have the money for the dealer to come out and pick it up so I left it sit where it was.
A friend thought it might be injectors and wouldn't hurt to drive it back up to the house-wrong!-that's when the engine blew. That was early this spring and that's when I went in to the dealer. If you don't know, this area has been hit by heavy rain and floods, getting into the fields was impossible before May, and iffy then. It is still raining every week!
My first visit to the dealer resulted in "0". Then a dealer in another state PM'ed me and told me about the problem with rod caps so I went in and told my dealer about it and he is trying again.
Hopefully what I learned from that will result in help.
"The squeaky wheel gets the grease" or so my dad always said.

 

[plowking]

Warranty expired in October 2007-the month it started knocking-I didn't know what the problem was and did not have the money for the dealer to come out and pick it up so I left it sit where it was.
A friend thought it might be injectors and wouldn't hurt to drive it back up to the house-wrong!-that's when the engine blew. That was early this spring and that's when I went in to the dealer. If you don't know, this area has been hit by heavy rain and floods, getting into the fields was impossible before May, and iffy then. It is still raining every week!
My first visit to the dealer resulted in "0". Then a dealer in another state PM'ed me and told me about the problem with rod caps so I went in and told my dealer about it and he is trying again.
Hopefully what I learned from that will result in help.
"The squeaky wheel gets the grease" or so my dad always said.

Did you call the dealer right off last October or wait until this year? There is going to be some concern if it can be proved it happened on Oct, or May. It would help if you had a friend who could have hauled it for you. I agree mantaining and owning a tractor is expensive. I pay a lot for upkeep ,but I use it in my business. How good a relationship did you have with your dealer? plowking

 

[RedRiver]

Post #1
"Warrenty expired the month it started knocking and factory says "tough luck"."

I"m still confused where the factory said "tough luck" the month the warranty expired when it was only knocking and you had not yet contacted the factory to let them try and address the issue. From the way I'm understanding it you didn't contact anyone til it threw the rod a year after the warranty was expired.

 

[jasperab]

I"m still confused where the factory said "tough luck" the month the warranty expired when it was only knocking and you had not yet contacted the factory to let them try and address the issue. From the way I'm understanding it you didn't contact anyone til it threw the rod.

I contacted the Dealer this spring, after the rod went. I did not remember if it had a 2 or 3 year warranty and found out it was 3 but had expired in October.

 

[RedRiver]

Please don't feel like I'm trying to hound you with question. I'm just trying to get all the facts straight. The timeline you gave was a bit blurry and still is a bit blurry about when you contacted the dealer and what they said. Spring covers a several month time period.

No offense to you but, regardless of how broke I was I think I could scrape up $50 for transportation to prevent ruining a $12,000 dollar machine. Like I said earlier, best of luck getting this resolved. My heart goes out to you and I hope you are able to find a job in the near future.

 

[MDM]

Two things. 1. He probably should have got the dealer to look at it when it started knocking. 2. The tractor should never have been knocking and throwing rods in the first place. Especially with such light work and 186 hours. I would be angry if I had such a catastophic failure too. I see both sides though. Hope you get it fixed.

 

[BobG_in_VA]

I contacted the Dealer this spring, after the rod went. I did not remember if it had a 2 or 3 year warranty and found out it was 3 but had expired in October.

Just a quick question that may/may not enter the picture when the dealer goes to the manufacturer: Did you do all the maintenance on the tractor or did the dealer, did you buy all your filter replacements from your dealer if you did the service yourself? BobG in VA

 

[patrick_g]

Now to subtly douse the flames with gasoline...

Mahindra vs. Kubota = Pewee Herman vs Mohamad Ali.

Got your attention?

There is a simple explanation of why a Kubota with HST will out perform a similarly sized and equipped Mahindra or virtually any similar sized GEAR tractor doing work requiring the Mahindra or the brand X to shift a lot. Just about any CUT with HST will out perform just about any other CUT that is a gear tractor in this sort of work.

I watched a friend with a geared JD CUT use his FEL to fill my dump trailer with gravel. He was happy with his performance and didn't notice any reason for me to be impatient with his progress. He stayed busy and worked as fast as was practical for his equipment and to be safe and to not smack dents in my new dumper. His productivity or to me more precise LACK OF PRODUCTIVITY was driving me crazy. I could have done the job with my HST KUBOTA SO MUCH FASTER it would not have even been close. If I couldn't do the job in half the time I would have been ashamed to try.

I figure this is relevant to the original post, is fair, and is representative of what to expect in general when the task at hand requires lots of maneuvering and reversing direction frequently. Ease of reversing direction and continuously variable trans ratio in this kind of work should show a significant difference in productivity. Do not underestimate the contribution to productivity made by the continuously variable trans ratio when doing lots of close in maneuvers. The productivity boost is not all ease of reversing direction.

The original post did not relate in the slightest to heavy ground engaging tasks and to arbitrarily convert the OP's simple comments into a peeing contest over big tractors pulling big plows or the like might be fun but has little or nothing to do with the OP. Case was not mentioned either.

I'm sure with some thought I could contort the discussion such that it would morph into one of the ongoing peeing contests based on tractor color, trans pref, cab vs open, or whatever and the general scrap to ensue could be fun to watch but it wouldn't do didly squat along the lines of the original question.

Oh, and I feel the OP's pain. He got bad advice which compounded his other problems. It isn't enough that he was out of work and had poor prospects, his low hour tractor lays down, but he comes here for help and gets accused of being a poser or worse.

What is the take home message we get out of this post? If you have a serious problem and would like some abuse to go along with it ask for help here.

So to the OP... Don't give up on us too easily. Sometimes we actually try to help.

Pat

 

[BobG_in_VA]

Patrick, I suppose you are free to espouse whatever...but if you had read/seen all the pics etc, you would have realized that the OPs tractor was NOT similarly equipped with the Kubota....it took the rest of us about 2 weeks to see a pic....of a 2WD 4500....this unit has a HI-LO 4 speed trans W/O syncho thru out the range...I think I'll leave it at that until you can catch up. BobG in VA