New Mahindra Owner!

[Etch]

Hi everyone. Just signed up on this site after reading many posts when I was deciding on buying a tractor. I found a lot of good information here.

I bought my new Mahindra 3525 about a week ago from Bill's Tractor in Adkins, Texas. The wife and I just completed building a house on our 24 acre ranch that we have owned for serveral years and used mainly for horse grazing. After all the rain we have had, we realized we needed a tractor to take care of the weeds and repairing our 1600 ft gravel driveway. We also have some drainage issues here and there we need to take care of and of course moving hay bails.

We looked at several different makes, but money definitely was a factor. We're Ford fans so a Ford tractor would have been nice. We have a John Deere lawn tractor and considered John Deere as well. Our neighbor has a Kubota and it's a very nice tractor. We decided on a Mahindra due to the price and the very good reviews and the fact that a reputable dealer was about 12 miles away.

We ended up buying a Mahindra 3525 with FEL, 6' shredder, 6' box blade, 9" post hole digger, single row plow (mid buster), canopy and a hay spear. Now if it would only stop raining for a few days so we can actually use it! We had a day with no rain, but the ground was too wet to do much.

Here is a picture of our tractor:

I'm new to the tractor world, so expect lots of questions from me!

 

[djw250]

Welcome to the board Etch, and to the world of tractoring. You'll find more to do with your new purchase than you ever imagined, and have some fun doing it. I almost bought one like that a couple of years ago, but got the 3510 instead. I wouldn't know what to do without it.

 

[weldingisfun]

Welcome aboard, Etch. Nice looking tractor.
Looking forward to hearing about the new projects you will be completeing now that you have the means to do them.
Fill out your profile so we will know how to respond to you.

 

[NetworkMD]

Welcome aboard, I am sure you will enjoy using your new Mahindra. Great dealership I have talked to Mario (Service Mgr) very profssional and knowedgable.

 

[Cacinok]

welcome to the forum and congrats on the new tractor.

 

[Etch]

Welcome aboard, Etch. Nice looking tractor.
Looking forward to hearing about the new projects you will be completeing now that you have the means to do them.
Fill out your profile so we will know how to respond to you.

I got a ton of projects. All waiting for the rain to stop. First thing is to shred about 22 acres of pasture. 2nd project is to make ditch to allow water to leave my front yard. 3rd project is to trench along side our gravel road to stop it from being a river everytime it rains hard. And of course we need to regravel our road/driveway and put in a culvert.

 

[Cacinok]

I got a ton of projects. All waiting for the rain to stop. First thing is to shred about 22 acres of pasture. 2nd project is to make ditch to allow water to leave my front yard. 3rd project is to trench along side our gravel road to stop it from being a river everytime it rains hard. And of course we need to regravel our road/driveway and put in a culvert.

etch your to do list is almost exactly the same as mine. i don't have 22 acres of pasture, but the rest is the same. here's the part of our driveway that passes in front of our house, during a recent rain storm. this is one of the least damaged areas. i guess that my driveway drains about 15 acres of water when we get a good rain.

 

[Etch]

etch your to do list is almost exactly the same as mine. i don't have 22 acres of pasture, but the rest is the same. here's the part of our driveway that passes in front of our house, during a recent rain storm. this is one of the least damaged areas. i guess that my driveway drains about 15 acres of water when we get a good rain.

Looks familiar, but mine is worse. It's all down hill and our driveway is at a dip in the road so all the water from fields across the street drain onto the road which in turn finds our driveway and it's like a small river. Fortunately, the water runs off the driveway into a pond before it gets to my house.

Most of the fine road base particles are gone now, leaving just the larger rocks. I plan on digging a trench to divert the water and putting another culvert in where it dumps into the pond. We're also going to put a hump at the entrance of our driveway so the water doesn't find it's way in and hopefully finds a better path to drain.

Now.. IF IT WOULD JUST STOP RAINING!!

I'll see if I can post some pictures later tonight.

 

[Etch]

Here are some pictures of my river.. uh.. I mean driveway:

And here is a small video of it in action!

Road River (10Mb)

 

[Cacinok]

all your pics look very familiar. my driveway is about 700' long and after a good rain the whole thing looks similar to yours. i just started repairing it tonight. we had a 18" deep by 2' wide trench through a about a third of the driveway that was dug out in the last 2 months. now it's gone. only about 500' of driveway to take care of. i lol at your video of your runoff, my wife thought i was a nerd for the pics i took.

 

[Etch]

all your pics look very familiar. my driveway is about 700' long and after a good rain the whole thing looks similar to yours. i just started repairing it tonight. we had a 18" deep by 2' wide trench through a about a third of the driveway that was dug out in the last 2 months. now it's gone. only about 500' of driveway to take care of. i lol at your video of your runoff, my wife thought i was a nerd for the pics i took.

LOL.. My wife is the one who suggested I take the pics and video!

 

[Tim_in_IA]

Here are some pictures of my river.. uh.. I mean driveway:

Yikes! Time for some culverts!

 

[Etch]

Yikes! Time for some culverts!

Yup! Another one! We just put in a large culvert a few months ago to replace a pair of crumbling concrete culverts that were installed in the 60's (it had the date etched into them..lol) You can't see it from the pictures, since it is behind where I was taking the pictures from.

We actually need to install 2 more culverts. 1 where you see the run off and another where the driveway starts across my front yard.

 

[Etch]

Started on 2 of my projects!! Just got back from South Carolina on business and found it hadn't rained since I left. The front yard is still wet from all the standing water, but I was able to start cutting a trench for drainage. I used the box blade and the FEL and it worked great. i had to stop when I started hitting the really wet stuff. So after that I took off the box blade and attached the 6' shredder and tackled about 5 of my 24 acers (actually 22 acres since 2 acres is accounted for by the house, yard, driveway, etc.) It was so nice to see those darned sunflower weeds get mowed down.

The 5 acres is the front pasture and as I was mowing the horses were lining up at the gate noticing all that nice grass that they would now be able to get to. Once I finished, I opened the gate and they haven't left since. I'm not really sure how long it took, but I'm guessing about 3 hours or so in 2nd gear (the weeds were really thick and the ground is very rough back there.) The wife was very happy when she got home. Even though I had the deck set up pretty high to avoid all the rocks I got out there, it made a world of difference. After shutting the tractor down, I went over to look at the ditch I had started and to my surprise, there was water in it. Looks like it will work nicely.

The only bad news of the day is the fact that I got a flat tire. The rear left tire was completely flat when I came back out about an hour later. I found no evidence of thorns or nails, but the air is coming out by the valve stem, so I guess a thorn did puncture it. I posted a thread in the Parts/Repair section.

 

[Shemp]

Started on 2 of my projects!! Just got back from South Carolina on business and found it hadn't rained since I left. The front yard is still wet from all the standing water, but I was able to start cutting a trench for drainage. I used the box blade and the FEL and it worked great. i had to stop when I started hitting the really wet stuff. So after that I took off the box blade and attached the 6' shredder and tackled about 5 of my 24 acers (actually 22 acres since 2 acres is accounted for by the house, yard, driveway, etc.) It was so nice to see those darned sunflower weeds get mowed down.

The 5 acres is the front pasture and as I was mowing the horses were lining up at the gate noticing all that nice grass that they would now be able to get to. Once I finished, I opened the gate and they haven't left since. I'm not really sure how long it took, but I'm guessing about 3 hours or so in 2nd gear (the weeds were really thick and the ground is very rough back there.) The wife was very happy when she got home. Even though I had the deck set up pretty high to avoid all the rocks I got out there, it made a world of difference. After shutting the tractor down, I went over to look at the ditch I had started and to my surprise, there was water in it. Looks like it will work nicely.

The only bad news of the day is the fact that I got a flat tire. The rear left tire was completely flat when I came back out about an hour later. I found no evidence of thorns or nails, but the air is coming out by the valve stem, so I guess a thorn did puncture it. I posted a thread in the Parts/Repair section.

Etch,

Boy that tractor looks familiar. Could be that I have the same one except I got the 5' cutter and 5' boxblade. Got mine about 2 weeks ago from Knox Tractor in Houston. It's a great piece of machinery.

If you can I would really apprecieate it if you could show some pics of the trench that you are cutting. I've got a similar situation on my land out in Columbus as far as drainage and would be interested in seeing what you are doing. Thanks.

 

[Etch]

I'll see if I can take some pics today or tomorrow. My property is on a downward slope and the natural drainage is good, but in the front yard we have a low spot and we have an area that is higher than it should be preventing the water from escaping. My plan is to fill some of the low spot and also cut a trench through the high spot. I don't want a narrow deep trench, since that would make it difficult to mow, so what I'm doing is cutting an 8' wide shallow trench just deep enough so the water will find it's way in and drain towards the back part of our property, where it naturally drains. I'm an amateur, so I'm not even sure this is the best solution, but so far, it seems to be working as water is starting to drain through there. I still have a long way to go.

 

[Cacinok]

etch, good to hear you've dried out some. it's a wonderful feeling to cross off projects. i'm about half way done fixing our driveway, but the half that i've fixed makes a huge difference.

 

[Etch]

etch, good to hear you've dried out some. it's a wonderful feeling to cross off projects. i'm about half way done fixing our driveway, but the half that i've fixed makes a huge difference.

Yeah I can't wait to fix the driveway. About to order some base here in a few.