Back about 2006 I bought a Woods 48" 3 pt hitch mower with a 1980 Bolens G174, a diesel 4WD tractor which was a big step up from the Simplicity hydro riding lawn mower which was having trouble with the hills on the property. The vendor wanted to get rid of it and wanted three hundred for the mower he was in the process of restoring. I looked at the cut on his lawn and decided it had potential. A week later I drove two hours to his home and bought the three suitcase weights for the front of the tractor, as well.
After the hydro Simplicity, mowing with the Bolens was quite a change. No more could I waltz around obstructions, turning tightly and backing up on a whim. Everything was gears-turning determination on the little diesel tractor, but it felt very solid, had power to burn, and used very little fuel. Its excellent rear differential left no tracks on the lawn during tight corners. The only problem with the cut had to do with mowing over undulations in the turf. The tractor carried the mower to a great extent and it tended to cut high if the front of the tractor was down in a dip. This might have been an adjustment error on my end, and I notice that more recent mowers of this type are largely towed with their own casters to determine cutting height.
Anyway, I had 15 acres of little trees and no way to mow between the rows, so that poor old Woods followed the Bolens through a lot of tree branches, as well as mowing three acres of lawn. The return for the suitcase weights happened the first time I raised the mower while climbing a steep hill. The Bolens did an exhilarating ground loop and I realized that I had survived it largely by luck. A few years later I rolled the tractor down another steep incline while towing a wide trailer (hooked a wheel on a stump), but that is another story already recounted on this site, I believe.
The old mower ate a lot of belts until I replaced the sheaves with new ones from Princess Auto. Then it worked very well, except that I couldn't let anyone else operate the tractor/mower combination because of its complete and utter lack of safety features. One time the pto shaft came off the mower and flailed around behind me until I shut the machine down, fortunately without damage. I decided I needed another diesel tractor with a roll bar and other safety features so that my wife could use it.
For half the price of a new Kubota B 2620 I found a five year-old
B7510 hydro with an auxiliary port and a five foot belly mower. It had 210 hours on it. The vendor wanted a larger tractor with a loader, and was prepared to revert to a riding lawn mower. I loaded the
B7510 onto my trailer and drove four hours home with it.
This has been an excellent tractor. The belly mower is miles ahead of the 3 pt hitch implement in quality of cut. Mind you, I spent a week on the garage floor adjusting the thing to maximum height to clear the rocks on our rather rough pasture-converted-to-lawn. The vendor, an ex-GM mechanic, explained how to drive over the mower to install and remove it. At maximum height this seemed unfeasible, so I drove it into the shop and hooked the front to the two rear arms of the car hoist with a chain. They meet in the middle. It became a four minute job to put the mower on or take it off, just lifting the front wheels enough (shift out of gear before shutting down) to clear the mower and shove it through from the front. This freed the Kubota for bush hogging, block splitting, and my winter favourite, running a 4" wood
chipper.
A belly mower is a quality piece of equipment, and to my mind it is worth the $3K price tag. On a used tractor, on the other hand, it may get thrown in to compensate for a missing loader.
My one whine about the Kubota is its rear differential, and it is a minor one. I noticed it on the vendor's lawn: on sharp turns the thing drags a wheel, whether it is in 2WD or 4WD. I shift in and out of 4WD a lot when mowing tricky terrain, keeping in mind that I must not make a sweeping turn of greater than 90 degrees without backing and filling. With the hydro pedal, of course, that is not a big deal.
My advice to a newbie: buy a quality used 20-22 hp diesel tractor with a belly mower and auxiliary fittings, if it is available. Little dump trailers are enormous work savers on the property. Somebody may want to sell his expensive little tractor in order to buy a larger one, or one with a loader. The Kubota has cost me $26. for a tachometer cable and the price of a new battery. That has been it for repairs in eleven years and 1300 hours of operation. The Bolens has cost quite a bit more than that for repairs. I had to split it once to repair a gear. Another clutch job involved 12 hours of labour cleaning mud out of its bell housing and clutch, but no parts. A head gasket cost another $1400. and a long wait while it came from the U.S. during Covid. Front tires were $450. A 1980 classic is more expensive to maintain than a 2005 modern Kubota, though the standard transmission
uses a great deal less diesel than the Kubota, especially on the generator.
